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THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



EDITED BY 

OLIPHANT SMEATON 



Anselm and 

His Work 

By Rev. A. C. Welch, M.A., B.D, 



Previous Volumes in this Series : — 

CRANMER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 
By A. D. Innes, M.A. 

WESLEY AND METHODISM. 

By F. J. Snell, M.A. 

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 
By Prof. T. M. Lindsay, D.D. 

BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM. 

By Arthur Lillie, M.A. 

WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. 

By James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E. 

FRANCIS AND DOMINIC. 

By Prof. J. Herkless, D.D. 

SAVONAROLA. 

By Rev. G. M 'Hardy, D.D. 

For Complete List see End. 



THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 

Anselm and 

His Work 



Rev. A/a-Welch, M.A., B.D. 



New York. Charles Scribner's Sons 

1901 



'^^^''^''^^■'<'^">4»4u 



^^' 












^ 



To 
The Memory of 

A. C. W. 



E'en as he trod that day to God so walked he fronf his birth 
In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth 



PREFACE 



A VOLUME of the size of the present does not permit 
the insertion of references to authorities within the 
text. It may be useful to indicate here the sources 
from which I have drawn the view of Anselm's Life 
and Times which is now presented. The classic 
biography on which all later ones are based is that 
by Eadmer. A monk of Canterbury, he became 
Anselm's private secretary and confessor. He has 
left to the world a study of his superior's private 
life in the De Vita et Conversatione Anselmi, and of 
his public conduct as archbishop in the Historia 
Novoriim in Anglia. I have been obliged to study 
these in Gerberon's edition (Paris, 1675), and in 
Migne's Patrologia: the best edition is that contri- 
buted by Mr. Rule to the Rolls Series. Anselm was 
also a voluminous correspondent, and over 400 of 
his letters, private and official, have been preserved. 
These I have consulted in Migne's Patrologia (clviii.- 
ix.). It is unnecessary to catalogue the early chron- 
iclers, Henry of Huntingdon, Orderic, and the rest. 
They are the same for this period as for any other 
in early English history. I would only single out 
a contemporary Life of Gondulf of Rochester by an 



viii PREFACE 

unknown hand (Migne clix.), and the " Lives of the 
Abbots of Le Bee," by G. and M. Crispin in Patres 
Ecclesice Anglicance, Oxford 1845. 

For the historical background and the general position 
of affairs in Europe I have found of special value the 
relative sections in Milman's Latin Christianity, 
Gregorovius' Geschichte der Stadt Rom ini MittelaUer, 
Giesebrecht's Geschichte der BeiUscJien Kaiser zeit, and 
Montalembert's Monks of the West. The Life of Gregory 
VII. is still however a desideratum. There are many 
valuable facts relative to Norma ndy and especially to 
the condition of education there in L'Ahhaye dii Bee et 
ses A'coles, by Abbe Poree (Evreux, 1892). On the 
history of England nothing more is necessary than 
what our own historian has given; and Freeman in 
his Norman Conquest and the Reign of William Rufus 
has paid special attention to the ecclesiastical situation 
and to the work of Anselm. Palgrave's unfinished 
Norraandy and England contains many brilliant sug- 
gestions. And some facts of value can be gleaned 
from H. Bohmer's Kirche uiul Staat in England 
unci in der Kormandie iin xi. unci xii. Jahrhun^dert 
(Leipzig, 1899). 

Of monographs on Anselm there is no lack; and 
these are written from several points of view. The 
early volumes, Veder, Dissertatio de Ansehno Can- 
tuariensi (Lugduni Batavorum, 1832), Mohler, Anselm 
(I have only seen a remarkably poor translation, 
London, 1842), and Franck, Anselm von Cccnterhury 
(Tubingen, 1842), are slight and inadequate sketches. 
Charma's St Anselme (Paris, 1853) consists for the 
most part of extracts and of a bibliography which 
though out of date is still valuable. Hook treats 



PREFACE ix 

of Anselm in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canter- 
bury, but the High Church Anglican is too much 
irritated to be quite fair. Remusat has a very brilliant 
life, St. Anselme d'Aoste (Paris, 1859), to which I 
acknowledge special indebtedness. Dean Church's 
St Anselm almost ignores the theologian and thinker, 
but devotes special attention to the man and the 
ecclesiastic. Hasse's Anselm von Canterbury (Leipzig, 
1852) contains in its volume on Die Lehre an elaborate 
and patient analysis of the doctrine. Martin Rule 
has published a voluminous Life and Tim.es of St. 
Anselm (London, 1883). Rigg's St Anselm of Canter- 
bury (London, 1896) is marked by the virility of 
thought and individuality of judgment which char- 
acterise all his work. Finally a history of St. 
Anselm has been written by Pere Ragey (Paris, N.D.). 
To this last I acknowledge a special debt. The 
author's acquaintance with the details of the ecclesi- 
astical history makes his book a valuable commentary 
on the letters. 

It is unnecessary to mention the treatises on philo- 
sophy and theology which deal with the Anselmic 
doctrine. It exercised so deep an influence that no 
later student has been able to ignore it. 

I have to thank here Mr. G. W. Alexander, M.A., 
who has read the proofs, for this new evidence of an 
old kindness. 

ADAM C. WELCH. 

Helensburgh. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface vii 

INTRODUCTION" 

Revival of Religion in the lOth and llth Centuries — Its Three 
Directions — Monasticism — Investiture Question — Scholasti- 
cism — Anselm's part in these 1 

CHAPTER I 

The A^al d'Aosta : 1033 or 1034-1057 

Aosta's Position — Anselm's Parentage — Education — Dream — Early 

Vow — He leaves Home 12 

CHAPTER II 

Sainte Marie du Bec : 1034 

Early Normandy — Its Religion — Foundations during llth Century 
— Their Weakness — Significance of Le Bec — Story of Herlwin, 
the First Abbot — Lanfranc enters the Convent — His Influence 
there 21 

CHAPTER III 

Monk, Prior, and Abbot : 1059-1092 

Monastic Schools — Anselm's Profession as Monk — Promotion to 
be Prior — Envy excited by it — Story of Osbern — Anselm as 
Teacher — His Letters and Growing Influence — His Love of 
Poverty — Election as Abbot — His Interest in Theology — His 
Preaching — The Narrowness of Convent Life — The Medita- 
tions — Tales to illustrate the OTiinion of his Intimates . . 38 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 
The Monologium and Proslogium 

PAGE 

Their Cause— Interest in Theology — Anselm's Power as a Teacher 
— Want of Books — Use of Socratic Method in Convents — 
Anselm's Religious Tone — His General Attitude on Faith and 
Knowledge — Monologium — Its Monistic Position — Origin of 
Proslogium — Its Argument — Gaunilo — Anselm and Augustine 
— His Effort to transcend Dualism 6l 

CHAPTER Y 

The Chuech in England : 1062-1087 

Struggle between Church and Feudalism — Value of Monks — 
William the Conqueror and Lanfranc — Condition of Church 
in England— William's Ecclesiastical Policy — Within and 
Without — Its Results — Lanfranc reforms Monasticism — Finds 
Help at Le Bee — Anselm's First Relations with England . 76 

CHAPTER VI 

Election as Archbishop : 1092-1093 

Death of Hildebrand — and the Conqueror — Rufus in England — 
His Character — His Ecclesiastical Policy — Its Results — Hugh 
the Wolf — Sends for Anselm— Anselm in England — Rufus' 
Illness — Permits Anselm's Election — Irregularities in it — 
Difficulties with the King — Consecration .... 91 

CHAPTER VII 

Rockingham : 1093-1095 

Anselm's Present to the King — Scene at Hastings — Its Significance 
— Urban ii. Pope — The Pallium — Its Meaning — Anselm asks 
Leave to go to Rome for it — Council at Rockingham — Policy 
of Rufus — Attitude of the Bishops — Anselm stands there for 
English Liberty — Support of the Commons — and Nobles — A 
Truce 116 



CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Rupture at "Winchester: 1095-1097 

PAGE 

Anselm's Solitude— and Helplessness — His Self-denial — Rufus 
sends to Rome — Walter the Legate — Secures Recognition of 
Urban — Rebellion in the North — Anselm receives Pallium — 
Peace with Rufus — Troubles with the Legate — Aims and 
Methods of the Latter — Clermont and the Crusade — Eufus 
in Normandy — Welsh War — Anselm's Contingent — Anselm 
demands to go to Rome — Significance of the Claim — Council 
at Winchester — Leaves England 140 

CHAPTER IX 

The First Exile and "Cur Deus Homo": 1097-1098 

Anselm in Flanders — and Lyons — Wishes to resign — Is summoned 
to Rome — Convent Life on the Way — Urban's Attitude — 
Sclavia becomes Anselm's Retreat — Cur Deus Homo — Its 
Theory; Weakness and Strength 165 

CHAPTER X 

Councils of Bari and Rome: 109S-1100 

Synod at Bari — Anselm and the Greek Bishops — The De Proeessione 
SpiritiLS Sancti — Excommunication of Rufus proposed and re- 
jected — Synod at Rome — Canons on Investiture and Homage 
— Reinger of Lucca protests against Treatment of Anselm — 
Anselm at Lyons — Miracles — Death of Urban — and Rufus . 185 

CHAPTER XI 

The Investiture Question — Anselm and Beauclerk : 1100-1103 

Accession of Henry — His Policy — His Dangers from Robert — He 
summons Anselm — Requires Homage — Anselm's Refusal — 
Embassy to Rome — Henry's Marriage — Robert invades Eng- 
land — Anselm's Help to King — Second Embassy to Rome — 
Council at London — Contradiction between Bishops and 
Letters — ^Third Embassy — Henry's Appointments to Sees- 
Meeting of Synod — Anselm sent to Rome . . .197 



xiv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XII 

The Co^'coedat: 1103-1107 

PAGE 

Anselm at Rome — Attitude of Paschal — Countess Matilda — Anselm 
at Lyons — Dilficulty of his Position — Negotiations — Henry 
confiscates Property of See — Anselm resolves to Excommuni- 
cate — ^Meeting at Laigle — Concordat — Aiiselm's Letter to 
Hugh — Tinchebray — Council at London — Acceptance of 
Concordat 220 

CHAPTER XIII 

Conclusion : 1107-1109 

Synod — Anselm checks Licence of Court — Threatens to interdict 
Archbishop of York — His Death — Signiiicance of his Con- 
cordat — He gave a Voice and Right of Speech to Church in 
England — and to Rome — His Limits to Rome's Interference 
— His Character in his Work — His Trust in Christian Methods 
and Influences 237 

Index 249 



ANSELM AND HIS WORK 



INTEODUCTION 

Europe in the early half of that eleventh century into 
which Anselm was born was renewing itself under the 
influence of a quickened religious spirit. Christianity 
in the Western world had two great outward struggles 
with paganism, the first with a paganism which was 
already in possession and was rich in the accumulated 
treasures of an older civilisation, the second with a 
paganism which sought to repossess itself of Europe 
and to overwhelm in barbarism the new order almost 
before it had struck root. The early incursions which 
broke down the Roman Empire had hardly been sur- 
vived, and their influence had not been assimilated, 
before an equally heavy storm burst upon the West. 
The Avars from Asia, ever fertile of men, thrust them- 
selves into the centre of Europe, and wasting every- 
thing on their way penetrated through Austria. The 
Saracens already possessed North Africa, and had with 
difficulty been restricted within the limits of Spain; 
they had captured Sicily and were not unknown 
before the walls of Rome. The Danes had seized on 



2 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

England: the last of England's missionaries to the 
Continent were fugitives from wrecked monasteries. 
From heathen Scandinavia the Normans had carved 
a cantle out of France, and were in no way content 
with the rich lands which they had won. 

During several generations Christendom had seen 
one province after another of her territory torn away 
by aliens to her civilisation, her law, and her faith. 
The circle within which the light of a better order 
shone was small. And the light itself within the 
circle inevitably burned more dimly. Men needed all 
their strength for war. They were compelled to fight 
for standing-ground on behalf of the truths and in- 
stitutions which they had already made their own. 
They had neither time nor energy left to rethink those 
truths or to reshape those institutions. To protect 
themselves against the enemy from without was their 
prime concern, and all their effort in thought as well 
as in deed was turned in that direction. Society had 
come to be constituted on a basis of war. Its recog- 
nition was given to those who could fight, its rewards 
to those who had fought well. Even the institutions 
which owed their inception to a different purpose were 
influenced by the same spirit. The Church was secu- 
larised. The bishops often became ministers of State, 
partly because there were no others who had the 
capacity to fulfil that necessary function, still more 
because it was the most obvious Christian duty to 
support the civil power in its struggle with heathenism. 
Sometimes the Church dignitaries became warriors, 
because the State had as much need of their swords as 
of their prayers. Nor is it necessary to conclude that 
the motive which drove them to buckle on their 



INTRODUCTION 3 

armour was base. When the Avars were at the gate 
a priest might be pardoned for leaving his oratory and 
joining battle. But the inevitable result followed in a 
deeper secularisation. Men were chosen to ecclesiastical 
office, not for their religious but for their secular 
prowess. That they had the capacity for affairs, or 
were strong men of their hands, became a reason why 
they were chosen to fulfil religious duties. And the 
men who were so chosen were compelled by circum- 
stances to think most about that side of their work 
for their generation. What was an additional advan- 
tage in a Churchman became his chief qualification. 
Necessary it might be, inevitable in the circumstances 
of the time it certainly was. But, had it continued, 
the result would have been that the Church would 
have lost sight of its spiritual functions and that 
society, thinking only of the necessities of the hour 
and engrossed in present needs, would have failed to 
receive the stimulus and vivifying breath which 
only the Church of Christ, conscious of higher ends 
than those of the present hour, can give. 

With the indomitable power of recovery and of 
returning for fresh inspiration to its Founder, which 
is one of the best proofs of the eternal power in 
Christianity, the tenth and eleventh centuries saw a 
revival of religion break across Europe. So soon as 
Christendom had won a clear space in which to pray 
and think, the Church returned to its specific task. 
There was abundance of work calling for attention. 
It had to recast its own thoughts about God and man. 
The brutalised manners which a long-continued state 
of war had brought on Christian Europe must be 
tempered by the spirit of the Crucified. The new 



4 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

strong-blooded nations which had found a lodgment 
within the Christian pale needed to be disciplined. 
Some of them were outwardly subdued. But, though 
Norman dukes and Danish earls accepted Christianity 
for themselves and forced its forms on their reluctant 
subjects, the conversion was only skin-deep. Even the 
princes did not greatly understand and could not 
heartily obey the faith they compelled their subjects 
to profess. Pagans, not merely in inward inclination 
but in outward practice, were found among the 
peasantry of Normandy for a century or two after 
Anselm had written his argument for the being of 
God in one of its convents. Because there was so 
much and so varied work to do, the revival of those 
centuries took several forms. It was as multiform as 
the life of w^hich it taught its generation a new 
valuation. Three of the directions in which the 
deepened religious sense flowed need to be mentioned 
here, not because they were the most important, but 
because Anselm represented and helped to guide them. 
As Churchmen grew conscious of having their own 
specific message, they realised how diflferent in its aims 
the Church must be from any of the kingdoms of the 
earth, and how the qualifications which made men 
citizens of the nations were ill-fitted to make " fellow- 
citizens with the saints and of the household of God." 
The contrast between society as it is and society as 
Christ meant it to be can never cease to trouble the 
Church, if it is to be the salt of the earth. Every 
revival of religion makes that more troublesome. And 
the corruption of morals which had followed on long 
war, the deeper corruption which saps a society that 
has organised itself as a camp when the peril from 



INTRODUCTION 5 

without has ceased to threaten, drove the conviction 
of the contrast more sharply home to the conscience 
of the Church. A Puritanic movement with its cry 
of "Come out, and be ye separate" spread through 
Western Christendom. It took an old form common 
to both East and West, but new needs brought into 
it a new spirit. The form was that of monasticism. 
The monks were the Puritans of the early mediaeval 
age. New monasteries sprang into being: Cluny, 
Clairvaux, Citeaux begin to be, and to be one of the 
most potent forces in Church and State alike. But 
though the form was old and in many respects familiar, 
the spirit was different. That most of the European 
monasteries accepted the rule of St. Benedict or framed 
new rules not unlike his great creation is in itself an 
indication of how new was the spirit which informed 
these foundations. The impelling motive was as before 
that men might save their souls alive, but they con- 
strued the method differently. They were not so 
entirely governed by the Manichsean conception of 
the flesh being itself evil, which in Eastern monkery 
lamed so much wholesome activity and, e.g., thrust 
into morbid prominence celibacy as the only form 
of chastity. Its presence cannot be denied. But 
it was no longer the controlling impulse in this 
revived monasticism. Rather was the fundamental 
impulse social. Men found themselves in a society 
which was based on war. So long as the war was 
waged against the infidel to keep Europe clear of 
paganism, the evil had been concealed. But when 
the threat of heathenism was withdrawn, the result 
it had produced on society remained. After heathen 
Norman and Dane had become outwardly Christian, 



6 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

the princes and dukes turned against each other the 
weapons the use of which they had learned to love 
and the passions they had not learned to control. 
Each wasted and ravaged the other's lands, slew or 
led into captivity the other's vassals. With a dreary 
monotony they passed from sacking a neighbour's 
tower to repelling an assault on their own. And the 
essential irreligion of it all became more manifest 
when it was Christian men who thus fought with each 
other. What had the Church to say to this state of 
affairs? The Church might and did enter to check 
excessive cruelty and to bid men show mercy after 
the battle was over. But had the Church nothing to 
say as to the constitution of society, which made such 
things possible, and which made them seem to many 
natural and inevitable ? Many men in the disgust and 
weariness which a society so constituted must bring 
had looked back and seen the ideal of a society which 
was based on love toward all men and on a consequent 
peace. And, longing for it yet unable as matters then 
stood to realise it, they went out of society altogether, 
and strove to build up a society for themselves on a 
new basis, the new and ever old basis of the obedience 
to Christ. What drove them first was the need to 
save their own souls and the recognition that while 
they remained where they were they could not save 
their souls alive. They became monks and more 
particularly Benedictines, men who vowed themselves 
to service rather than to destruction, to love rather 
than to strife. 

But this clearer vision on the part of the Church as 
to its own specific purpose in the world had a further 
result. So long as the distinction between the king- 



INTRODUCTION 7 

doms of this world and the kingdom of Christ was 
not present to men's minds, there could be little con- 
flict between the two institutions which represented 
these, and such conflict as did arise between Church 
and State could be determined by easy compromises 
which did not touch principles. But so soon as the 
Church grew conscious of how far its ideals were its 
own and came not from an earthly but a heavenly 
Master, it was sure to raise the question of ecclesi- 
astical method. Every revival of religion must bring 
to the front the relations between Church and State. 
A Church which is conscious of its peculiar dignity 
and of its special ends will never be content to have 
its officials appointed and its policy dictated by men 
who must construe its purpose from a different stand- 
point. The conflict was certain ; that it was so bitter 
was due to its novelty. While the efforts of the civil 
power were largely directed to keep Christendom from 
being submerged, the Empire maintained in men's 
imagination the sacrosanct character it had long 
borne. Its aims not unworthily represented the king- 
dom of God on earth. The Church, facing the immedi- 
ate task and content to accept the State-ideal largely as 
its own, could well submit to have its methods of govern- 
ment controlled for such ends. While the bishops 
were State functionaries, and much of their energy was 
exhausted in fulfilling duties of a civil character, they 
might readily be appointed to office and even elected 
by the head whose work they aided. But when this 
temporary condition passed, and when Church officials 
realised anew their spiritual functions, they began to 
chafe, and the best among them to chafe most, against 
what now became an outside interference. The period 



8 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

saw the long strife over investiture. The merit of 
Hildebrand as an ecclesiastic is that he saw the issue 
so clearly and clung steadily to one principle. He 
struck at the centre of things when he claimed that 
religious men — the college of cardinals, and neither 
emperor nor king — must appoint the chief dignitary 
of the Church. He wrought from the centre out when 
he demanded that no archbishop should be consecrated 
until he had received the pallium, the symbol of his 
spiritual authority, from a pope so elected. He de- 
veloped the system of legates who kept the several 
national communions in close touch with the revived 
centre of authority. He strove to break the custom 
which had grown up of making Church dignities 
hereditary property and the appanages of great 
families by his canons against simony and in favour 
of clerical celibacy. Certainly the old idea of the 
superior sanctity of celibacy came to his aid, and he 
used it unhesitatingly. High Churchmen have often 
been heedless what heresy they helped to promote, if 
only they could compass their immediate end. But 
to him celibacy was not merely an end in itself; it 
was the means through which he overthrew the 
great ecclesiastical families and brought Church dig- 
nities under the control of the Church itself. It is 
not difficult to see the evil results of much of this 
policy and to recognise that it contained germs of 
evil which were later to blossom rankly. The idea of 
clerical celibacy brought a gross conception of the 
religious life, which needed to be flung off in the 
exaggerated protest of the Renaissance. The legates 
continually interfering with the government of local 
churches drew all initiative into the centre, until, over- 



INTRODUCTION 9 

loaded with problems it was incompetent to answer 
and questions it could not understand, it simply ceased 
to act. The system which, at a time when the centre 
at Rome was full of fresh spiritual and moral life, sent 
life through every limb of the great body ecclesiastic 
made the corruption more swift and potent when the 
popes were Borgias. A means which religious men 
have used to promote a religious end often becomes 
a strangling cord round the neck of their less religious 
successors, who count themselves the inheritors of 
their fathers' purpose when they have only taken over 
their fathers' methods. But in its beginning the move- 
ment was the outcome of a new spiritual life within 
the Church itself. The more devout spirits welcomed 
it most heartily. The monks were Hildebrand's best 
supporters ; the outcome of the religious revival, they 
recognised and furthered a movement which had its 
roots in the same soil. 

And finally the deepened sense of religion produced 
a new interest in theology. Men had been fighting for 
several generations, they now began to think of the 
matters in defence of which they had unconsciously 
fought. Schools were founded. The monasteries be- 
gan to copy the older literature and to write their own 
thoughts. The thirst for knowledge spread and drew 
men together. Hundreds of students flocked to 
Abelard's lectures. Men travelled across half Europe 
to have the opportunity of learning from Lanfranc. 
In these centuries the scholastic theology and philosophy 
had their birth. 

And St. Anselm, as monk at Le Bee, as archbishop of 
Canterbury, as author of the Monologiuni and Cur 
Bens Homo, bore his part in this threefold movement. 



lo ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

He entered into it all, because he was a man of 
genius who was also a profoundly religious man. 

And in no one man of the time is it possible to study 
its movement more purely than in him. The man 
dwelt with God. His work is the expression of that. 
It is not always possible to be sure about the cleanness of 
Hildebrand's hands. Kot all the temptations of power 
nor all the greatness of the issues involved can excuse 
the inhumanity which Canossa proved to lurk in the 
pope, or expel the suspicion of an overweening pride. We 
confess to finding it difficult always to respect Bernard 
of Clairvaux, and his reiterated speech about humility 
makes the pride of the ascetic more open. One cannot 
entirely like Thomas a Becket. He leaves the impres- 
sion of posing and of striving to live up to his part. 
Anselm leaves on one student of his lifework the im- 
pression of entire sincerity. He is one of the monks 
to whom the austerities and restraints of the convent 
have become a second nature. They have ceased to 
limit him, and consequently have become his support. 
The monk's cowl is part of himself. He stands up be- 
fore William Rufus and Henry Beauclerk to fight the 
battle of the liberty of the Church in England. He 
fights it uncompromisingly, but through all his battle 
gives the impression of one who fought not for the 
interests of his order, but for what he believed to be 
the interests of the kingdom of heaven. He writes on 
the most abstruse questions with an extraordinary 
boldness, which the fact of his agreement with the 
opinions received by his Church should never conceal. 
Boldness in thought is too often claimed as the mono- 
poly of the heterodox. In and through all his work 
the man stands as a wholesome man, answering with 



INTRODUCTION 1 1 

what power he can, in the light of the strong religious 
convictions he holds, the questions with which his time 
brings him face to face. And so he has his reward. 
For, whether men agree or disagree with the answers 
he gave, they cannot fail to honour the spirit in which 
he did his work, and must end by loving the clean- 
souled, high-minded monk who, while seeking only to 
serve his generation according to the will of God, has 
made more clear to all after generations how that time 
presented itself to the eyes and to the efforts of men 
like himself. 



CHAPTER I 

The Val d'Aosta 

AosTA, where Anselm was born between April 21 
1033 and April 21 1034, lies on the Italian side of the 
passes of the St. Bernard. In its name, Augusta 
Praetoria, and in its ruined walls the town still bears 
the indelible marks of its foundation as a Roman 
settlement, from which one of Augustus' generals 
pacified the unruly tribes of the Alps. It became the 
centre of a deeper pacification when about the fifth 
century it was made the seat of a bishopric. And 
where the Roman Empire left walls, the Christian 
Church left the memory and the graves of saints. 
Unknown elsewhere, but remembered in the district to 
which their lives were given, the names of Saints 
Jucundus, Gratus, Ursus persist among the hills and 
valleys. Though his see was sufiragan to that of 
Milan, the Bishop of Aosta seems to have maintained 
but a loose connection with his superior. Political 
rather than ecclesiastical considerations determined 
his allegiance, and he appears more frequently at the 
court of Burgundy than at that of his archbishop. 
The fact may have aided to prevent the little town 
from being drawn within the influence of the political 
and ecclesiastical ambitions of Aribert, the successor of 

12 



THE VAL D'AOSTA 13 

St. Ambrose, and to preserve it from the social upheaval 
which this prelate's restless spirit stirred up in his 
diocese. 

Eadmer describes the valley as lying on the borders 
of Lombardy and Burgundy. In a period of un- 
certain frontiers to be on the borders of any state 
meant in every instance a shifting allegiance ; and 
anyone who has tried to follow Burgundy through the 
early part of the Middle Ages will know how specially 
mutable that State was. But the Burgundy of our 
date was a county which Henry ii. and Conrad had 
succeeded for a time in making an integral part of the 
emperor's dominions. And in 1034, after a fierce 
struggle between Odo of Champagne and Humbert the 
Whitehanded, the latter had brought the Val d'Aosta 
under his power. Anselm was therefore born a 
member of the German Empire and under the 
immediate rule of the Counts of Maurienne, from 
whom the present ruling house of Italy claim descent. 
But a border town Aosta was and had always been, set 
at one of the gates of Italy, with Lombards and 
Burgundians, Swiss and Italians thronging its narrow 
streets, with the peaks of the Alps and their walnut 
groves shutting it in on the north, while the Dora 
Baltea swept down beneath its bridge to the rich 
meadows of the Po. Anselm traced his lineage to the 
double strain in his people. Lombard on the father's 
side, Burgundian on the mother's, reared in a town 
which was too small to inspire a civic pride and had 
served too many masters to know a peculiar devotion 
to any, he may have found it easier to grow into a 
citizen of the kingdom of God, who was willing to serve 
his Master in Normandy or England as the need was. 



14 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

In those days such a town and all Europe knew but 
two classes of society. And by birth Anselm belonged 
to the class which ruled. His father, Gundulf, and his 
mother, Ermenberga, were both members of the 
governing class to whose unquestioned prerogative we 
have no exact modern parallel. Both were nobiliter 
nati, gentle born, both possessed property, part of 
which their son could afterwards dedicate to the 
service of God. When the boy of Aosta had become 
famous as abbot and theologian, Humbert, successor to 
the Whitehanded in the county of Maurienne, was not 
unwilling to acknowledge himself to be of the same 
blood. A tower in the manor of Gressan, not far from 
the foot of the Becca di Nona, still bears the name of 
St. Anselm. The tradition may preserve to our time 
indication of the exact site of the property which 
Ermenberga is known to have possessed in the valley. 
And as the count had acquired fiefs in the same 
district through his wife who belonged to the house of 
Valais, it seems probable that Anselm's connection with 
that house was through his mother.^ But the precise 
position held by the family in the social hierarchy 
cannot be clearly traced, nor, since it left little influence 
on the one member for whose sake the others are 
remembered at all, is it of great importance. 

Gundulf is described as a lavish-handed, high-spirited 
man of the world, who was unwilling that through his 
only son becoming a monk his race should become 
extinct, but who himself took the cowl a short time 
before his death. He has perhaps suflfered a little at the 

^ Rule has built up an elaborate pedigree of both Ermenberga and 
Gundulf. His conclusions are possible. Those interested in the matter 
may be referred to his book. 



THE VAL D'AOSTA 15 

hands of Eadmer, since he belonged to a type the carnal 
valour of which no monk could quite appreciate. Yet 
his son may have owed something of his high courage 
and simple disdain of money to his Lombard father. 
Ermenberga was a careful housekeeper, striving to 
hold together what her husband was ready to squander, 
a pure-spirited woman, who looked well to the affairs 
of her own house and who found time to talk 
to her boy of the concerns of God's house. Her 
family had ecclesiastical connections, and this, when 
education was wholly in the hands of the Church, 
brought her son the best mental training which the 
time could give. Two of her brothers, Folcerad and 
Lambert, were reverendi domini, canons probably of St. 
Ours in the town. One of these was also Anselm's 
godfather, and to his charge as mUritor according to 
the custom of the time the boy was committed, that 
from this house he might attend school and be under 
the general supervision of his uncle. The school was 
in all probability in a priory which the Benedictine 
Abbey of Fructuaria had early in the century set up 
in Aosta. The Benedictines were already winning 
laurels in the cause of education, and doing 
what in them lay to answer the dawning mental 
curiosity of the century. Here, under the austere 
discipline of the age, the boy passed through the 
regular course of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. 
The monkish teaching fell on receptive soil. Anselm's 
Latinity, which is so sinewy and flexible as almost 
to read like his mother tongue, and his power of in- 
cisive analysis prove how honest was the work the 
Benedictines wrought in their priory among the 
Alps. 



1 6 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

Of those boyish years we possess but few incidents. 
Yet the few which have come down serve to piece 
together some faint mental picture. One day Ermen- 
berga received her son home and to her infinite 
distress hardly recognised him, so changed was he. 
While he had once been frank, he was now morose ; he 
shrank from everyone's sight, and avoided even her 
caresses. The home with its larger interests, which 
should have charmed the schoolboy free from books 
and discipline, seemed to hurt him. He winced at its 
noise, found no interest in its activity, and sedulously 
avoided all its inmates. After the first pain of finding 
her child changed the mother-heart taught her the 
right cure — a little wholesome neglect. The boy, shy, 
thoughtful beyond his years, brought up without 
companions in the society of his elders, had been 
overtasked by his zealous tutors, who were doubtless 
proud of so apt a pupil, and whose methods both of 
physical and mental culture were severe even to men. 
He had been strained beyond his powers, and his 
nerves had given way. But there are only some 
lads who are capable of being overstrained in 
mental effort. Already his life-course was dawning 
in the boy. 

Dreamy he was and full of the fair fancies which 
come to most children, but which persist in the thoughts 
of the solitary ones, and which, because they are not 
dislodged by the ideas of playmates, help to make the 
lonely souls. His mother had spoken to her boy, as 
mothers ever will, of heaven. And when the sunset 
burned among the Alps beside Aosta, the boy had seen 
behind its crimson and gold the palace walls of the 
Lord of Hosts. In his dream he set out to climb to it. 



THE VAL D'AOSTA 17^ 

As he went he passed through the fields where women 
and men were busy at the harvest- work. These were 
the servants of the King, and, since they did their work 
sluggishly, he resolved when he had reached the pre- 
sence to accuse them before their Lord. In the 
audience-chamber he found God seated on His throne 
with none about Him except the seneschal of His 
household because the others were busy in the fields. 
" So he entered, and the Lord called to him ; and he 
came near and sat down at His feet. And the Lord 
with gracious gentleness would know who he was and 
whence he came and what was his desire. He answered 
all according to the verity. So the Lord gave order, 
and the butler brought him bread of the whitest, and 
he ate and was refreshed in the presence of the King." 
Such was the story which Anselm, when archbishop 
of Canterbury, told the confessor who guided his 
private conscience, the secretary who helped him in his 
public duties. Among his childhood's thoughts this 
alone had persisted throughout his life. But there are 
dreams which at once betray and help to make men. 
And to the archbishop as to the child idleness was 
one of the great vices, and there was only hunger for 
soul and conscience except one had bread to eat which 
the world knew not of. 

But the priory not only gave its pupil Latinity and 
guided him through the Trivium : it brought him into 
contact with the Benedictine order, and so with the 
rising religious movement which was giving the order 
new life, and which in turn the Benedictines were to 
do much to extend and guide. The boy was naturally 
religious, the whole atmosphere of his surroundings 
hitherto had borne the same character, his loneliness 



1 8 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

had made the impressions deep. He was studious, 
already so athirst for knowledge that he had worked 
too hard. To his boyish thought idleness was a vice. 
What was more natural than that the severe Bene- 
dictine rule should seem to offer the opportunity he 
desired and to fulfil the ideal of a holy life ? It 
was true that his uncles were in the religious life 
and yet were no monks. But canons in such a 
place as Aosta were often little more than worthy 
gentlemen of good family, whose birth gave them 
admission to ecclesiastical posts which provided them 
with modest revenues. On these they led respected 
and respectable lives, and in return fulfilled certain 
devout duties. When a new ideal of religious duty is 
beginning to captivate men's minds, the representatives 
of an older order are liable to seem destitute of any 
ideal at all. A youth, above all in his early enthusiasm, 
will count such a service of God insufficient, and in his 
first ignorance of life will claim for himself a more 
difficult self-denial. Anselm applied for admission to 
a neighbouring convent. The abbot, however, refused 
to accept him without his father's consent. Gundulf, 
who had no mind to see his only male heir a monk, 
refused his consent. The zealous boy — he was 
about fifteen at the time — prayed for an illness which 
might extort permission from his father. The illness 
came, in answer Anselm believed to his prayer ; but 
the consent was still withheld, for it is difficult to force 
the hand of the Almighty. When the illness had 
passed, the desire for a conventual life had passed with 
it. For some years he lived in his father's house and 
forgot, as though they had never been, his earlier 
desires. In later years the monk spoke with bitter 



THE VAL D'AOSTA 19 

self-reproach of this period in his life as a tirae in 
which he plunged into excesses which left an enduring 
regret. But it is well to take self -accusations in such 
a man with a large reservation. To him, who had so 
lived himself into monkery that it seemed to him the 
only truly Christian life, the time during which he 
forsook his early desire seemed a time during which he 
forsook all religion. There may have been nothing 
worse in it than the wholesome reaction, when the lad 
rose from his bed and saw the green earth under him 
and the blue heaven over him, and filled his lungs with 
the Alpine air, and took back his life and his joy in 
the large world like a gift from out of God's hands. 

About the year 1056 his mother died. She left 
besides Anselm only a daughter, Richera, to whom we 
find her brother writing in later years, and who was 
at the close of the century the mother of infant 
children. Richera must have been much younger than 
her brother, and it is possible that Ermenberga died at 
her birth. And when the mother was dead, father and 
son found themselves hopelessly misunderstanding 
each other. They had never possessed much in 
common ; and the strength of character which marked 
them both made them unable to cloak their difference. 
So long as the more spiritually minded woman had 
lived, she had kept the difference from rising to an 
open antipathy. Now, when she was dead, the 
situation became impossible. Gundulf was at no pains 
to hide his dislike. There was no one to soften it. 
Anselm at last could bear it no longer. He determined 
to leave home. In the early summer of the following 
year, with no very definite aim before him, he loaded 
his few necessities upon an ass and, accompanied by a 



20 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

" clerk," crossed the Mont Cenis to disappear for 
three years in Burgundy and France. He went out 
not knowing whither he went. The instinct of his 
life was guiding him. Eadmer says he was not re- 
ceived into the convent near Aosta, because it pleased 
God that he should not be entangled in the conver- 
sation of the place. And certainly it was better 
for the world and for himself that he should profess, 
as he finally did, in Normandy rather than in 
the valley among the Alps. For in France was a 
religious and theological interest which no other part 
of the world could show. Italy and Germany were 
engrossed in the political and ecclesiastical side of the 
religious question. In Normandy Lanfranc was teach- 
ing. France was largely dominated by the congrega- 
tion of Cluny, and with all its limitations, which were 
afterwards to make it the centre of Ultramontanism 
and obscurantism, Cluny was the most potent and 
pure ecclesiastical influence of the time. Eadmer 
might well declare it to have been of the Divine 
guidance that the future archbishop and theologian 
crossed the Mont Cenis. 



CHAPTER II 

Sainte Marie du Bec 

In 1034 Herbert, bishop of Lisieux, dedicated to the 
Virgin-mother a humble Benedictine monastery not 
far from Brionne. Thither Anselm's unconscious feet 
were leading him when he crossed the Mont Cenis. 
In that brotherhood he should profess as monk, teach 
as prior, rule as abbot, before England claimed him. 
He should be one of the men who made Sainte Marie du 
Bec famous wherever good scholarship and holy living 
were valued. Since this became the "nest" to which 
in years of later trouble he looked back with longing, 
and since it gave him, perhaps the best, and certainly 
the happiest years of his life, it is necessary to 
attempt to recognise its significance for the Normandy 
of its time. 

Normandy was in the making. The years of 
conquest were past. Already the great lines of its 
future strength were beginning to show dimly through 
the chaos. Yet the outward appearance of the 
land was no unfit sign of its inward life. It was 
still a wilderness of forest and swamp, where the 
clearings that should become cities stood out like 
islands in a sea. The townships were dotted here and 
there, grouped round a minster or a castle; and 



22 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

though the wooden houses were weak and the local 
institutions childlike in their simplicity, the cities of 
to-day often occupy the old sites and the civic life 
retains much from its beginnings. Above these, 
protector and terror, rose a Norman keep. Built less 
as a home than as a defence, its site agreed with its 
purpose. On some plain the encircling river was used 
to form a natural ditch ; on a crag the walls were but 
needed to complete what the rock had begun, and the 
hand of time makes it difficult to-day to distinguish 
where Nature ceased and man began to build. Here a 
baron, as stark as the keep he had built, kept his own 
against his enemies and wrought his will on his 
defenceless tenants. He obeyed nothing higher than 
his own will, realised but fitfully that there was 
anything higher. "Every lord that was mighty of 
men made him strong, and many weened to have been 
king." Turbulent, lawless, loving battle, yet with fine 
elements of manly honour and knightly faith breaking 
through their brutality, these lived as they listed. 
Mortemer and Varaville had not yet taught them the 
strength in the hand of the tanner's grandson. So 
untamable were they that only the force of the 
Conqueror could restrain them and that the order 
which he had hardly maintained in his lifetime could 
not survive him. They could be bent by a more 
resolute will or outwitted by a clearer brain. But 
everything still depended on the individual ruler and 
his personal character. All the elements of a strong 
government in a young-spirited and intelligent race 
were present, but an ordered State was still to be 
built up. 

The force which could alone moderate the baseness 



SAINTE MARIE DU BEC 23 

as well as discipline the strength of the Norman 
character was still too largely a force from without. 
Christian they had been called for some generations. 
But their Christianity had been too much of a super- 
stition to do much more than check their worst 
excesses and produce wild remorse of conscience, the 
cure of which was as superstitious as its cause. How 
little the temper of heathenism had died out among 
those Northmen betrayed itself when their still heathen 
countrymen burst into the country about the middle 
of the tenth century. Almost all the baptized fell 
back with relish into the practice of rites which they 
had not yet forgotten. Only those about Evreux 
stood fast to their new faith. Duke Richard i., him- 
self too young to understand all that the step involved, 
was prevented by wiser counsellors from being carried 
away in the common apostasy. When he came to his 
strength he maintained the attitude which had been 
taken for him, won from his own people by his loyalty 
to Christianity the name Sans peur, and checked by 
his steadfastness the pagan reaction. And after he 
had with the help of neighbouring Christian princes 
made his duchy his own again, he set himself to 
revive monastic institutions there as the best means 
of renewing religious life. He restored convents which 
had been ruined, built and endowed new ones, gave 
every encouragement to the Benedictine revival among 
his people. Yet the canons of a council held at Rouen 
in 1050 show that paganism was still so much of a force 
in certain parts of the duchy almost a century later as 
to claim the attention of Church courts. What was 
able to survive even in outward form till then must 
have survived in spirit for many years later. 



24 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

The fact, however, that the victory under Duke 
Richard was won in the name of Christianity and 
with one definite issue before it united with the 
example set by the duke himself to produce in the 
following century an outburst of ecclesiastical and 
religious zeal in Normandy. It was the period of its 
great foundations. "The abbeys of Jumieges, of 
Conches, of Fecamp, of Mont St. Michel, of St. Wand- 
rille at Fontanelle on the Seine near Rouen, of St. 
Amand within, of Ste. Catherine or La Trinite du 
Mont and St. Ouen without the walls of that famous 
city, of Grestain near Lisieux, of Le Bee, Bernay, 
and Cormeilles between Rouen and Lisieux, of St. 
Evroult between L'Aigle and Argentan, of St. Leufroy 
between Evreux and Gaillon, of St. Pierre sur Dives 
near Troarn, were all restored, reformed, or founded 
during the latter half of the tenth or the first half of 
the eleventh century." 

Yet, potent for good in the present and full of 
promise for the future though these foundations were, 
they long suffered under one fatal and common defect. 
They did not belong to the people themselves. Not 
so much born out of their inward life as imposed upon 
it from without, most of the monasteries remained 
exotics. Part of the stimulus to their foundation came 
from political and dynastic considerations. The rulers 
had based their power on Christianity, because they 
saw that there lay the promise of the future for 
themselves and for their land. They naturally sought to 
strengthen the hold which religion had on their people's 
lives. They built and endowed, they encouraged 
reform and brought in monks. But religion needs 
more than money and stones. For years not merely 



SAINTE MARIE DU BEC 25 

the ideals to guide their reformation but the men to 
carry it into effect needed to be drawn from among 
foreigners. The native clergy of Normandy were 
insensitive to anything except the outside of the 
movement, and the ideal of monasticism had not 
touched the conscience of the people. It is true that 
we only know the character of the generation from 
the records of their successors, who saw everything in 
the light of the later movement, and it is never safe 
to judge the morals and ideals of one generation by 
the new zeal of their followers. There were brave 
and holy men among the Moderates. But the com- 
plaints against the clergy of Normandy in those 
decades are too constant to be ignored. When Pope 
Leo IX. visited Kheims in 1049 the independent temper 
of the French clergy towards the Roman see without 
doubt made his judgment on their moral character 
more severe. The clergy who were not Ultramontanes 
were sure to find their marriage described as con- 
cubinage, their view on investiture condemned as 
simony. Yet that council found it necessary to pass 
a law forbidding clerics to wear military weapons or 
to engage in war. Many of the superior clergy chose 
the position not for the religious influence it offered 
but for the high position at court it opened. When 
the chief ecclesiastical dignity, the archbishopric of 
Rouen, was held during 113 years by three men, two 
of whom were bastards of the ducal house, one under- 
stands that there were disadvantages connected with 
the fostering care of the Norman lords. Men gave 
their countenance and their lands to the rising 
monasteries, but they still hesitated to give them- 
selves. When they gave their sons, they gave these 



26 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

not so much to serve the aims as to enjoy the dignities 
of the Church. 

The significance of the foundation at Le Bee is not 
to be found in its power to rival in dignity its con- 
temporaries, nor in the commanding ability of its first 
abbot. In both these respects it was negligible. What 
gives it importance is that Herlwin in the prime of 
his strength elected to leave his knighthood and 
become a monk. The foundation represented the 
convictions of a man who gave more than a fostering 
and slightly patronising protection, because he gave 
himself. The Norman knighthood to their astonish- 
ment discovered that one of themselves counted their 
common life insufficient to satisfy the needs of his 
immortal soul and was resolved to rise up and seek 
a better. Now what those who are aliens to the 
common habits of a generation may choose to do does 
not trouble any generation greatly, it may even be 
put aside with an amused contempt. But when a man 
to whom life is oflfering the best which it can give to 
his equals gravely puts it away as inadequate, his deed 
strikes the imagination of the dullest. At last the 
ideals of monasticism had touched the Norman imag- 
ination, had reached within the Norman thought. One 
result was that the little house of religion exercised an 
influence quite out of proportion to its size or to the 
importance of its founder. And while it must be 
acknowledged that great part of its power is due to the 
circumstance that it was fortunate enough to count 
amontr its monks men like Lanfranc and Anselm, there 
must have been much of native vigour in the place, 
which could first attract men of such character within 
its walls and could then give them the opportunity 



SAINTE MARIE DU BEC 27 

they needed. The tales which have come down of the 
abbey's founder and his first illustrious monk serve 
alike to show what temper the men were of and the 
causes which drove men then into conventual life. 

There lived at the court of Count Gilbert of Brionne 
a knight named Herlwin, one of the count's stoutest 
retainers. Sprung from a mixture of the Danish and 
Flemish stocks (his father Ansgot was of the old 
Danes, his mother Eloisa was akin to the Counts of 
Flanders), the knight was brave with the high courage 
which is more like hereditary instinct. He had been 
found wise in counsel and prudent in matters, so that 
his lord trusted him in the court no less than on the 
field. He was capable also of the generosity and 
quick sense of honour which can never be wanting in 
any man who is to lead men to a deeper understanding 
of the Divine generosity, without which in truth no 
man will ever see much in God to declare to men. 
Once his lord and he had quarrelled. The loosely- 
firm organisation of the period permitted a subordinate 
a large liberty in resenting any slight to his personal 
honour; and Herlwin judging himself insulted had 
withdrawn from Count Gilbert's following and was 
living privately at home. To him, sulking in his 
retirement, came the news that his lord had gone 
out to do battle with an old enemy, and that 
matters were likely to go hard with him, since the 
neighbour was stronger than he. The old loyalty 
awoke at once at the summons of the count's adver- 
sity, the temporary quarrel was forgotten, the slight 
to his personal dignity was disregarded. Herlwin 
gathered a troop of twenty men at arms, appeared on 
the very morning of the battle alongside his chief, 



28 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

and there — but not until with true Norman love of 
legality he had been reconciled in due form with his 
adversary — followed his lord to a victory his coming 
had made possible. 

To this man, unembittered by failure and while his 
strength was still in him, the higher service of Jesus 
Christ revealed itself. He turned to listen, and as 
he listened, it grew ever more manifest to him that 
in this semi-barbarous society where war was alike the 
amusement and the business of his class, where he held 
his position and exercised his privileges on the simple 
condition of being ever ready for war, he could not 
truly follow Christ. Yet the rough soldier's wit could 
not but recognise the duties which his estate in life 
demanded from him. He could not flee from them. 
If he did, his superior would seize his lands and visit 
on his vassals the anger which he could not wreak on 
their now monkish lord. The man was in the strait to 
which the state of society must at that time have 
brought many a man who was determined to make 
earnest of Christian profession. For some time, since 
the count was obdurate and would not let him go, 
Herlwin tried to satisfy his conscience with subordinate 
sacrifices. He refused to eat the dainties at his lord's 
table and satisfied his hunger with the plainest fare. 
He denied himself the pomp of a warhorse, and where 
it was not possible to walk insisted on mounting an 
ass. The fashion of his utterance mio;ht be uncouth and 
awkward but cannot fail to appear of simplest truth. 
He was resolute to witness to the great reality which had 
become the one reality for him, that the obedience to 
Christ meant something more than the life which his 
companions in arms lived, and which himself had 



SAINTE MARIE DU BEC 29 

lived until that time. The effort roused the amused 
contempt of men who found it impossible to conceive 
why a knight who was still sound in wind and limb 
should even think of a monk's cowl. But this con- 
temptuous amazement only made the weight of the 
problem heavier on the solitary spirit. Herlwin bore 
his false position as long as he might. At last it had 
grown intolerable, and as often happens in such a case 
an outward event served to transform into action a 
half -formed purpose. He had followed his lord on one 
of his unceasing raids into the territories of a neigh- 
bour. But on this occasion matters " fell not out to 
Count Gilbert according to his desire. For Ingelram, 
Count of Ponthieu, met him with a strong force, and 
engaging him put him to flight with his men, and of the 
fugitives many were taken and many slain and many 
disabled with wounds. Then a certain soldier there 
named Herlwin, fearing the danger and flying with all 
his might for his life, vowed to God that if he got off" 
safe from so present a danger he would henceforth be 
soldier to none but God." He escaped, and kept his 
vow. No considerations could now hold him back. 
Neither the threats nor the entreaties of the count 
could prevent him from continually returning to his 
plea for dismission. " By loving the world and obeying 
y6u," so ran his petition to his lord in the words in 
which a later age reproduced it, " I have until now too 
much neglected God and myself : too intent on clothing 
and too mindful of the body, I have forgotten the im- 
provement of my soul. Therefore I entreat you to 
allow me, if ever I have deserved well of you, to spend 
my remaining days in monastic seclusion." 

To a man who lived in that world life meant 



30 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

obedience to other principles than those of Christ. So 
soon as " it pleased God to reveal His Son in him," the 
plain soldier had realised the fact. The sincerity of the 
man's mind made him unable to shut it out. Custom 
and familiar duties had retained him for a time, 
even after his new-born conviction had made him 
uneasy. It had needed the shock of outward circum- 
stance to make his troubled thoughts pass into resolu- 
tion. But once formed the resolution was irrevocable. 
Only Herlwin had no thought of founding an institu- 
tion, and just as little was he thinking primarily of 
helping society. He was seeking to save his soul alive. 
He craved to escape into an atmosphere which made it 
possible for a man to think of self-devotion and to 
practise self-sacrifice. It was inevitable in those days 
that he should become a monk, almost as inevitable 
that he should become a Benedictine. There was 
nowhere else where he could go. For, whatever 
they afterwards became under other influences, the 
Benedictines were facing the question of their time. 
Their answer was imperfect, as the answer of most men 
is. But one thing they saw plainly and said fearlessly 
at the cost of what most men value above everything 
else, that society as then constituted in Normandy was 
fundamentally unchristian, that so soon as a man made 
earnest of his obedience to the great Master of all he 
was bound to protest against it with what force was in 
him, and that they for their part would protest by going 
out from it and casting from them its rewards and 
its hindrances. Therein lay the strength of this mon- 
asticism. It represented an ethical reformation. It 
believed that Christ's principles were practicable and 
were meant to be obeyed. And offering to earnest men 



SAINTE MARIE DU BEC 31 

an opportunity for putting those into practice and the 
support of a society likeminded with themselves, it 
won some of the strongest natures to its service and 
its aims. 

But the troubles of the new soldier of Christ w^ere 
not at an end. He had but little knowledge of re- 
ligious institutions. He could not even read. He 
looked about him for guidance, and found at first 
nothing but discouragement. In the courtyard of one 
monastery, where with all the embarrassed devotion 
of a new convert he stood silently watching the move- 
ments of the brothers, the porter mistook him for a 
thief, and having knocked him down from behind 
dragged him beyond the gates by the hair. On 
another occasion he was scandalised by the behaviour 
of the monks in their procession. Some were so busy 
displaying their Christmas vestments to the onlookers 
that they had no attention to give to their service. 
Two even fell to blows over their place in the cere- 
monial, and one of these finished the unseemly squabble 
by felling his neighbour. But the devotion which had 
resisted the sneers and the persuasions of the Count of 
Brionne's court was proof against the more difficult 
test of seeing Norman convent-life from the inside. He 
was cheered, too, it is said, by one simple incident. 
When he knelt in a certain church at prayer, a monk 
stole in alongside and all unwitting of a spectator pros- 
trated himself to spend the long night in prayer and 
tears. But Herlwin would not enter into any of the 
religious houses which he knew ; he resolved to found 
one for himself. 

His first monaster}^ was situated on his own property 
at Burneville, a few miles from Brionne, and was as 



32 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

humble a house of religion as existed in Normandy. 
Its heart and soul was the devout, indomitable spirit 
of its founder. Many of the stones of his first build- 
ing were laid with his own hands. He taught himself 
to build. With his few companions, some of whom 
had been comrades in arms, he wielded mattock and 
spade. At the age of forty he taught himself to read, 
and as all the hours of the day were needed for more 
material cares, stole hours from his sleep to learn his 
psalter. The convent was miserably poor ; sometimes 
the brethren had not enough to satisfy their humble 
wants. Herlwin consented to be appointed abbot in 
1037, not because he desired the oflSce, nor because he 
counted himself fit to fulfil its duties, but because no 
other could be found willing to accept the lowly honour. 
The site proved to have been ill chosen. Not even the 
diligent labour of the monks could make the wilder- 
ness yield enough for their maintenance, and there 
was no spring nearer than a mile or two from the 
building. 

Some miles farther down its course the Risle is 
joined at Pont Authou by a tributary, which was too 
small to receive a distinctive name. Men called it Le 
Bee, the Danish name which still lingers in Cumber- 
land for a streamlet. Here Herlwin elected to build 
anew, probably because he owned some property there. 
The rivulet drops down to the Risle through fir woods 
that furnished favourite hunting-grounds to the sport- 
loving Normans. After these had been in some way 
contented, the brethren removed to their new site and 
founded a convent which, like the old, they dedicated 
to the Virgin. Its fame made the brook famous : 
Sainte Marie du Bee, Our Lady of the Rivulet. 



SAINTE MARIE DU BEC 33 

The number of the monks increased, and the spirit 
which animated them was excellent. Eloisa the 
abbot's mother, since she could help no otherwise, 
offered her services to wash the poor clothes of the 
brethren. But, though the abbot was zealous, he was 
also ignorant. Now zeal without knowledge will not 
hold a house of monks long together, especially when 
these are of the untamed Norman blood and many of 
them have worn a helmet before they put on the cowl. 
The discipline of Le Bee was suffering, and Herlwin 
had begun to feel keenly the want of the training 
which could enable him to guide the enlarging life of 
his little community, when circumstances threw in his 
way the man he needed. His sagacity made him fit to 
appreciate, his humility made him willing to use the 

gift. 

Lanfranc, sprung from a legal family, learned 
especially in the canon law, with the instincts of a 
Churchman if not of a saint, had left his home at 
Pavia to visit France. Paris in that age occupied to- 
ward Rome the position which Alexandria held at a 
much earlier date as the school of a rising Christian 
theology and as the place to which every inquiring 
mind instinctively turned for light on the questions of 
speculation which were beginning to exert anew their 
perennial fascination on the minds of men. Lanfranc 
found his way to Avranches, and there taught for a 
time with profit and increasing fame. But teaching 
could not content him ; like many another he was look- 
ing with longing eyes towards a monastic life. As 
the story runs, he was on his way to Rouen to seek 
instruction in religion, when he fell into the hands of 
robbers. Thereon it occurred to the scholar how he 
3 



34 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

had heard of one in like case from whom robbers stole 
his horse and who proffered them the whip which was of 
no further use to him, with the result that the thieves 
touched to sudden remorse by his Christian patience 
restored their victim both horse and whip. Lanfranc 
thought to show a like gentleness in hope of a like 
reward and offered the men who had taken his goods 
his clothes as well. But, whether the Norman robber 
was coarser in fibre than his Italian fellow-rogue, or 
whether, as Lanfranc himself thought, Providence 
recognised and punished the insincerity of his offer, his 
assailants construed the request as a mockery, accepted 
the clothes, beat their wearer, and left him stripped 
and bound to a wayside tree. Here in equal danger 
of perishing from wild beasts and from cold Lanfranc 
sought relief in prayer. To his surprise and dismay 
the famous canon-lawyer and best Latinist of Europe 
found that in his hour of need he did not know how to 
pray. Lecture he could, but he could not even repeat 
a passage from his psalter. The incident determined 
him ; and he vowed that if God delivered him from 
this peril he would instantly betake himself to a 
monastery and there before it was too late learn how 
to pray. 

Some peasants found and freed him in the early 
morning. When he asked the way to the poorest 
monastery in the neighbourhood they directed him to 
Le Bee. In later years the gifts of the faithful made 
the abbey so rich that a doggerel Norman rhyme 

runs — 

"De quelque part que le vent vente 
L'Abbaye du Bee a rente." 

But at this time the brethren could not from poverty 



SAINTE MARIE DU EEC 35 

keep the light in their chapel burning day and night. 
Arrived there, the new - comer was directed to the 
abbot. He found Herlwin busy at the building of an 
oven, half hidden in its rising wall. " God save you," 
said the Italian. "God bless you," answered the 
Norman and added, struck no doubt by his visitor's 
accent, " Are you a Lombard ? " "I am." " And what 
is it you would have from us ? " "I would become a 
monk." A brother was despatched to bring a book of 
the rule. Lanfranc read it while the abbot went on 
with his oven. Satisfied with its requirements, he 
kneeled among the bricks to kiss his new superior's 
feet. A few days later he made his profession as a 
member of the brotherhood. And the quondam soldier 
taught the great scholar and ecclesiastic how to pray. 

As Lanfranc went in and out, a humble monk in the 
humblest cloister of Normandy, he marvelled at the 
things which he saw. For he saw a simple piety 
building up uncultured men into nobleness of life, and 
recognised how the sincerity and elevation of their 
purpose cleared the men's minds of mists and gave 
them direct invsight into some spiritual realities. 
Herlwin was so little of a scholar that he had needed 
at the age of forty to teach himself to read. Yet 
when he commented to his monks on Scripture and 
tried in soldierly fashion to express the thoughts as 
to God's purposes which St. Paul's Epistles awoke in 
himself, Lanfranc wonderingly acknowledged how vital 
his explanations were. He could not understand it, 
he said, save that it was another proof of how the 
Spirit like the wind bloweth where it listeth. And 
the lawyer of Pa via who had lectured to the crowding 
students at Avranches became like a little child, and 



36 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

putting from him his pride strove to gain the best 
which the discipKne of the cloister could bring him. 
One day, probably as he read to the brethren gathered 
to their midday meal, the abbot or another corrected 
a supposed false quantity in the reader's Latin and 
bade Lanfranc pronounce clocere what he had rightly 
called docere. He obeyed, and when asked his reason 
replied that he now counted it a greater thing to 
obey Christ than to follow even the grammarian 
Donatus. 

On the other hand Herlwin was unwilling that this 
new brother should be buried among the ordinary con- 
vent-duties. He had not been sent of God to their 
monastery merely for his own sake but for theirs as 
well, and he could render them a service which they 
needed. Perhaps, too, the shrewd abbot who had not 
lived at the court of Gilbert without learning much 
about human nature knew how impossible it is for 
any man of real power to deny the nature which is in 
him. Lanfranc, associating only with untutored monks, 
having no one quite likeminded with himself, began to 
fret his heart out in morbid self-communings. He had 
even resolved and made preparation to flee into the 
wilderness and become a hermit. But the abbot, 
warned it was said by a vision, though it needed no 
larger vision than a genuine sympathy with other 
men can bring, showed such manifest distress that 
the other was softened to remain. Herlwin made 
him prior and brought through his more cultured 
nature a new tone into the little community. He 
encouraged him to resume his work of teaching, and 
when scholars, hearing that the Lanfranc whom they 
had counted dead was in Le Bee, swarmed to the 



SAINTE MARIE DU BEC 37 

place in numbers which embarrassed the monkish 
hospitality, Herlwin was willing to let the monks 
starve rather than the students. Among the rest 
came, drawn simply by the fame of a learning about 
which all Normandy spoke, another foreigner who 
combined the qualities which distinguished the abbot 
and prior of the monastery, who united the piety 
which distinguished the one with the scholarship which 
marked the other. Lanfranc brought Anselm to Le 
Bee, and for the sake of Anselm and of what he 
wrought there men still remember Le Bee. 



CHAPTEK III 

Monk, Prior, and Abbot 

The Benedictines had from their beginning interested 
themselves in education. Prior to the ninth century, 
however, their schools were confined to the oblates, 
children dedicated to the monastic life and under 
training for that specific end. In the time of Charle- 
magne and doubtless through his influence the abbey 
schools had followed the example of the episcopal and 
opened their doors to all. Protest was raised by those 
who feared the secularising influence : a convention of 
abbots at Aix in 817 determined that the schools 
should be reserved for the oblates. But the large 
ideal of the emperor was too strong, and the result 
of the decision at Aix had been that two kinds of 
schools were instituted. There were now monastic 
schools proper, scholce claustrales, where the boys were 
all virtually novices, and scholce canonical which were 
open to the clergy and even to the sons of laymen. In 
some cases there existed within the abbey itself a 
training college where younger monks were put under 
a special director, either because they had professed 
without passing through one of the other schools, or 
because they were judged capable of benefiting from a 
further education. 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 39 

When Anselm then appeared at Le Bee in the 
autumn of 1059, he came as a layman attracted by the 
fame of Lanfranc's scholarship. The religious impulse 
which had once made him desire to profess at Aosta 
was not dead but it was dormant. Nor was Lanfranc 
the man to reawaken it in a spirit like Anselm's. The 
two men were drawn powerfully to one another by 
the fact that they had in common many thoughts 
which they could only share with each other. The 
learned ecclesiastic could appreciate and guide the 
strenuous intelligence of his new pupil. The pupil 
never forgot his intellectual debt to his master. But, 
while they corresponded in later years on many sub- 
jects, their letters never show them opening their 
hearts to each other. 

The spring of 1060 brought to Le Bee the news of 
Gundulf's death, and forced on Anselm the necessity 
of deciding what he meant to do with his life. He had 
already thought of becoming a monk. The scholar in 
a monastery fared as meagrely and slept as coldly as 
any monk in his cell. In many of its habits, in all its 
austerity the student's life was very near that of the 
professed monk. What it had not was the strength 
which comes from brotherhood in a common purpose 
and the hope of eternal reward. Why should he not 
take the vow which would require so little and give 
so much ? Yet if he took the vow at Le Bee, he could 
be of little use there, since the abbey had no need of 
two theological teachers, and as the archbishop frankly 
confessed he was not then monk enough in spirit to 
relish the certainty of being eclipsed by Lanfranc. If, 
however, he went to Cluny the life of which he had 
learned during his wanderings, could his health endure 



40 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

its austerities or would its monks be willing to use 
the learning which he already knew must be the 
master passion of his life ? At times he meditated a 
return to Aosta, there to devote life and patrimony to 
the care of the poor. One thing only he was resolved 
not to do, he would not live unto himself. Fearing 
lest inclination should obscure duty, he asked the 
advice of his prior. Lanfranc sent him to their dio- 
cesan, the Archbishop of Rouen ; and Maurille decided 
for Le Bee. It may have been the memory of this 
decision, its hallowed results for himself and the 
grounds on which it was formed, which gave a special 
tone to his advice to an old pupil, Arnulf : " I highly 
praise you, that you purpose going where you can live 
according to your scheme, yet I warn that you do so 
with the permission of your abbot, and that wherever 
God direct your way . . . you choose no place where 
you can be of use to and instruct others, but one 
where you can profit from others and be taught by 
them in the spiritual warfare." 

Le Bee was under a modified form of the Bene- 
dictine rule. Entry into the novitiate was very 
simple. In the chapter-house where the abbot pre- 
sided the postulant prostrated himself, and to the 
abbot inquiring his business answered, " I seek God's 
mercy, your fellowship and the brotherhood of this 
place : I long to become a monk and to serve God in 
this monastery." The abbot replied with the larger 
wish, " God grant you fellowship and a place among 
His elect," to which the assembled chapter said Amen. 
He then set before the postulant the duties and trials 
of a monk under the rule. The postulant promised to 
fulfil and bear them all. To this promise the abbot 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 41 

answered, "Our Lord Jesus Christ so fulfil in you 
what for love of Him you promise that you may 
obtain His grace and life everlasting," and the monks 
again said Amen. "And we for love to Him grant 
what you so humbly and earnestly desire." After 
kissing the abbot's feet the novice was led to the 
church and there clothed in the dress and hood of the 
order. When the novitiate, which in Anselm's case 
must have been very brief, was past, the monks were 
assembled in the church-choir. At the close of the 
Gospel in Mass Anselm was led in by the master of 
novices. While he walked to the altar and prostrated 
himself on its steps, the Miserere was chanted by his 
new brethren. In the after silence the novice rose to 
read his vow from a slip of parchment: "I Anselm 
do before God and His saints promise the faithfulness 
of a monk, newness of life and obedience according to 
the rule of St. Benedict in this monastery which has 
been built to the glory of the blessed Mary ever 
virgin, in the presence of Herlwin its abbot." He laid 
the slip as an offering on the altar, and standing on its 
steps borrowed the words of an older ritual, " Uphold 
me, O Lord, according to Thy word and I shall live, and 
let me not be confounded in my hope." Three times 
this was repeated, and three times the monks, as 
though reminded of their own need by the hearing 
of another's prayer, echoed their new brother's peti- 
tion. Then over the monk now prostrate the abbot 
intoned the De Profundis. A few prayers followed: 
the Veni Creator was sung: Anselm rising was 
sprinkled with holy water. His cowl was blessed by 
the abbot. His novice's tunic was removed — "The 
Lord put from thee the old man with his deeds." The 



42 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

cowl was put on him — " The Lord put on thee the new 
man who according to God is created in justice and 
holiness of truth." Anselm was a monk in Le Bee, 
and the kiss of peace was given him by his brethren. 
This was in 1060, when he was twenty-seven years 
old; and he was to live there as monk, prior, and 
abbot for thirty-three years. 

Monasticism in the West had still the dew of its 
youth. To realise this, it is only necessary to see the 
three figures which are grouped round the rise of Le 
Bee : Herlwin, learning to read by night and building 
his oven by day ; Lanfranc, the best Latinist and one of 
the sagest Churchmen of his day; Anselm, who pondered 
while his monks slept and whom the Church needed 
to summon on his obedience into the world of action. 
There could have been nothing stereotyped in a rule 
and a life which could attract and satisfy three minds 
of such divergent t^^pe. Regulations which would 
have been the breath of life to Herlwin would have 
stifled the powers of Anselm. But the fearlessness of 
a new enthusiasm was still present to the Benedictines. 
They were not afraid of individuality, within certain 
limitations they fostered it. Nor were they afraid of 
life. It was not a refuge the abbey ofiered, it was an 
opportunity. Every Benedictine community stood for 
one thing in Europe : it preached the sacred dignity of 
labour and the hatef ulness of destruction. In an age 
when men counted their manhood by the amount they 
could destroy, when their pastime as their pride was to 
wreck or to prevent others from wrecking them, the rule 
which commanded labour as necessary to the soul's health 
reminded an astonished world of the dignity of labour. 
The monks in the days of their strength were the 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 43 

creators. Where others wasted, they built and ditched 
and taught. And the artisan and labourer dimly 
realised that these men brought him what all the sons 
of men must gain if their work is not to be a drudgery 
but a means of grace, the sense that their work also 
could in its measure be made divine. There were men 
too, like the Conqueror, who in that unquiet age only 
tore down that they might more surely rebuild. These 
were ever the readiest to acknowledge the help the 
Benedictines could lend them, and sought sometimes by 
hurtful privileges to foster their efforts or to purchase 
their aid. 

The first three years in the convent were spent by 
Anselm in obscurity, the world forgetting, by the world 
forgot. But no sooner had Lanfranc been summoned 
by William of Normandy to become head of the 
monastery the duke had founded at Caen, than 
Anselm was promoted to the ofRce of prior. Lanfranc 
had given fame to the little community so that 
men flocked to it for knowledge. It was felt that 
no one was better fitted to continue his work than his 
ablest pupil. But the first years of ofiice were made 
bitter to the new prior. Envy is not abolished when 
its range has been narrowed. There were men in the 
convent who resented Anselm's rapid promotion, and 
who set themselves to thwart the man whose advance 
they could not prevent. It was only for a few years, 
for the simple purity of the prior's life, the high sweet 
dignity of his aims, the absence of all self-seeking, his 
invincible patience and almost womanly tenderness 
succeeded even in silencing envy. How much it cost 
and brought him is revealed in his letters. It is true 
that he never wrote about it. Indeed it is one 



44 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

characteristic of his letters that he rarely speaks 
about himself, and that while willing to help and 
counsel all who consulted him he seldom claims their 
guidance. Yet it is not without meaning that he so 
often urges patience on monks, and that the verse 
of Scripture which recurs oftenest is how tribulation 
worketh patience. 

In the convent at the time was a young monk, 
Osbern, who though younger in years was older in 
religion than the new prior. His jealous seniors who 
dared not show too nakedly their own resentment 
encouraged the lad in disobedience to his superior. 
He set himself with the ability of a splenetic boy 
to worry Anselm in the thousand ways which the 
close relations of a small monastery make so easy and 
so wearing. The prior bore with all. Seeing a true 
heart beneath the monkey tricks, he resolved to win it, 
and to that end gave the lad special notice and allowed 
him certain indulgences. Slowly the ice melted. Osbern 
learned to believe in the affection of his superior and 
impetuously like a boy repaid it by an entire devotion. 
No sooner did Anselm see this than he altered his 
treatment. Little by little he withdrew the indul- 
gences and began to test the youth's devotion by 
tasks which would serve to deepen it. Gradually the 
true character began to show more clearly. Already 
Anselm was able to rejoice in the prospect for his pupil 
of a nobler manhood which would be an ornament to 
the convent and a means to the glory of God. But 
Osbern fell ill with a mortal sickness. While the illness 
lasted the prior hardly left his bedside, and when the 
monk died, it was with the prior's hands ministering 
to his last necessities. Nor did death break that love. 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 45 

Again and again in his letters does Anselm's affection 
for Osbern reappear. "Salute Dom. Osbern who is 
with you as my beloved brother for the dead Osbern, 
my well-beloved, . . . wherever Osbern is, his soul is 
my soul. During my lifetime I will claim on his 
behalf whatever I might after death hope from your 
kindness, so that after my death ye may be free (from 
the prayers for the dead). Farewell, my beloved, and 
to repay thee according to thine own importunity, I 
implore and implore and implore thee to remember me 
and forget not the soul of my beloved Osbern. And 
if I seem to burden thee overmuch, forget me and 
remember him." 

Anselm's treatment of Osbern marks his power in 
education. The prior recognised what can be made of 
rich untutored natures by giving them an aim on which 
to expend their energy. While he recognised that 
strength which submits to no rule becomes weak or 
worse than weak, he had no monkish fear of vigour in 
itself. He believed in life and good and Christ : 
discipline and rule were but the means of attaining 
these more thoroughly. This eye for the foundations 
of character made him a revolutionary in educational 
method. The age believed in rigour especially in 
education. Guibert de Nogent mentions as a matter 
of course about his own, " meanwhile I was beaten 
almost daily with a cruel hail of stripes and blows." 
Monks in the chapter were beaten for slight offences. 
The oblates were taught to chastise each other when 
their masters had finished with them. To Le Bee came 
one day an abbot who opened his heart to his brother- 
educator as most men seem to have done who came in 
contact with the gentle prior. His lament was over 



46 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

his failure with the boys under his care. We do our 
best for them, so ran his plaint. We teach, correct, 
chastise them. But they only grow worse : they learn 
no respect for us and, what is more grievous, no respect 
for the life to which we seek to introduce them : they 
grow up sour-hearted rebels: and I am well-nigh 
broken-hearted over the business. Do you, answered 
the prior, pursue no other method than lashing ? See, 
brother, if you take a young tree with all its sap in it 
and check a branch here and tie in another there, what 
will you have a right to expect when you unbind the 
lashings ? Surely a twisted malformed thing which 
is good neither for timber nor for fuel. And if you 
do nothing but check your lads, telling them they are 
wrong here, reminding them they are wrong there, can 
you wonder if all the branches of their natural 
capacity turn to gnarled worthlessness ? The homily 
was so pithy and so gentle that the abbot asked 
pardon for his mistake from his brother and from 
God. 

Along with this went what is often bestowed on 
men who have forgotten themselves in a high purpose, 
the golden gift of understanding a brother's thought. 
Apart from the theological and historical value of the 
letters of the Church fathers they deserve examination 
as psychological studies. The study is within a narrow 
range but is often extraordinarily keen. Flashes of in- 
sight occur in Anselm's letters which prove his estimate 
not only of the value but of the dangers of the monastic 
life he strenuously followed. Writing to Lanzo, an 
old pupil, he marks the disappointment many an ardent 
spirit must have suffered at the discovery of the 
cloister's drudgery. " So soon as we have pledged our- 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 47 

selves to Christ's banner, the tempter comes to us not 
merely from without, he glides into the camp of Christ 
to ruin for us our service there. Nothing is more 
frequent than that young monks are tormented by 
scruples as to whether they have done right in becom- 
ing monks. Or though they will to remain monks, they 
imagine matters to be better in another cloister than 
in their own and ask whether they should not go 
thither. So they are like young trees which do not 
strike root in the new ground in which they are 
planted because winds move them hither and thither. 
Therefore your first care should be surrender to your 
new position, and it will not be hard for you to accom- 
modate yourself thereto if you at first keep constantly 
before you the dangers which you have escaped, and 
thank God that He has suffered you to escape into 
the haven of the cloister-life, be it one haven or 
another." 

The circle of Anselm's influence grew as his character 
became known. Men are quick to discover one who 
can give them help. Part of this was inevitable and 
natural as monks who had been trained under him 
went to other foundations. Lanfranc in his effort to 
reform the religious life of England brought over 
monks from his former convent. The men remembered 
their old master and turned to him with a sure 
conviction of finding unfailing sympathy. But others 
claimed help. From Hirsau the abbot who is trying to 
plant the aims of Cluny in the tough imperialistic soil of 
Germany asks guidance in a question of discipline. Some 
write for his books on metaphysics, others for copies of 
his Meditations, some make him their confessor in diffi- 
cult passages of their lives, most beg for his prayers. 



48 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

This increasing influence was due not merely to his 
ripe intelligence but to the happy lovesome temper 
which plays through his letters to his intimates. He 
seems to take a delight in forcing the monkish Latin 
to express in ever-varying form his regard for men 
like Maurice and Boso, his favourite pupils, or for 
Gondulf of Rochester, his alter ego. To one of these 
who longs to be back at Le Bee but whom Lanfranc 
needs and will not suffer to return he writes : " Although 
the more I love thee, the more I could wish to have 
thee with me, yet I love thee more for the very reason 
which has separated us. For since I love thee not 
so much for my own sake as for the sake of God and 
thyself, I love thee more, that thou provest thyself to 
be such as that those with whom thou art are in no 
wise to be brought to let go one who has won their love, 
than I should, could they be readily brought to send 
thee away. I pray thee therefore as a brother and I 
urge thee as a Avell-loved son with that care and diligence 
which thou well knowest I have ever cherished toward 
thee, that more and more thou advance in good conduct 
and bear patiently with me our separation, so long as 
Lanfranc orders it, counting it a divine appointment ; 
and that thou in no wise by impatience lessen the very 
ground of my greater love to thee. For although I 
deeply long that thou shouldest be with me in fam- 
iliar talk, yet I more largely desire that thou shouldest 
abide in good conduct." And if he writes to his 
intimates with tenderness, he writes to all his corre- 
spondents with sympathy. In all the correspondence 
which has been preserved from the period in Le Bee 
there is scarcely a letter which is entirely formal, or 
which does not contain somethinor of the writer's 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 49 

personality. There is none which could give the 
correspondent the impression that he had intruded 
himself unwarrantably upon a busy man. The prior 
never wrote as though he grudged the labour. He 
gave himself to men who sought help and made them 
realise without words that he counted it a sacred and 
beautiful charge to be of use to them. 

But these increasing duties pressed heavily on the 
prior's time and strength. The guidance of the schools 
was naturally in his hands; as naturally the cor- 
respondence of the convent fell to his care, for Herlwin 
was better with the trowel than with the pen. Again 
and again Anselm must excuse himself to the im- 
portunity of his friends for the brevity or the absence 
of his letters on the ground that he has not the time 
to write. The convent grew faster in the number of 
its monks than in the means for their support. It was 
still a poor foundation. Herlwin was eager to build 
a new church before he died. Anselm was resolute 
not to refuse the hospitality of the house to strangers 
or to the poor. Lanfranc sent generous supplies from 
England, but the prior wrote of one such gift that it 
had fallen like a shower on sand refreshing and evan- 
escent, and of another that he and his monks were like 
Pharaoh's lean kine which devoured and remained 
lean. When the monks were hungry their superior 
bade them trust in God. They remembered in later 
years that they had never trusted in vain, but one 
suspects there were hungry days in Le Bee. The 
inward and outward management of a house of religion 
claimed gifts of administration which were not exactly 
at the command of the metaphysician. Once he sought 
relief from his diocesan and prayed to be allowed to 
4 



50 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

demit his office. But Maurille who had sent him to 
Le Bee bade him go back and prepare, should God claim 
him for larger duties still, to submit to the claim. 

Since the abbot was- growing old and infirm his 
duties devolved more and more on the prior, and 
since the property of the monastery was increasing 
Anselm was often required to travel on the business 
of the house. It is said that Herlwin wished to sive 
him for such journej^s the necessary horses as his 
private property. But even at the words private 
property the monk felt a shudder of revolt. While he 
was still in the world, he had been impatient of the 
idea. " Even then," writes Eadmer, " reason taught him 
that all things in the world were created for the common 
good of men by the one Father of all, and that therefore 
according to the original ordering nothing belongs to 
one more than another." He would have joined 
St. Francis of Sales in speaking of sister Poverty. 
For the monks of those days embraced poverty, not 
merely because it implied a greater self-denial or freed 
them from the peril of administering wealth, but 
because they saw in it a means by which they could 
come nearer to their Lord. They had not forgotten how 
the Founder of Christianity elected poverty for Him- 
self, and the way in which they construed human 
brotherhood made them the earliest socialists. This 
side of their action made of the early convents a 
potent social force. It is not only that a man like 
Anselm counted his revenues as abbot or as archbishop 
a trust which he held for God's poor. That was true, 
and it helps to explain part of the support which the 
commons gave to the Benedictines. But the mediaeval 
peasant was degraded with a degradation to which we 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 51 

find no modern parallel. He belonged by birth to a 
class which could not hope to rise. His business was 
to cultivate lands which his lord would have counted 
it a dishonour to cultivate himself. Harried by his 
own superior to provide the sinews of an often un- 
righteous war, he was worse harried by his superior's 
enemies in order to destroy a source of revenue. If 
captured in war, it might be his fate to be butchered 
with his fellows in heaps because it was not worth the 
captor's while to hold them to ransom. And to his sur- 
prise, almost awe, he saw men some of whom belonged 
to the superior caste choose voluntarily an estate lower 
than his own in order that they might become better 
men. Not merely did the monk put from him some 
pleasures, the denial of which the peasant could not esti- 
mate. He denied himself warmth and food and drink 
the worth of which everyone could estimate. And men 
were helped to recognise anew that there are some 
things which contempt and poverty cannot destroy, 
to attain which the monk had deprived himself of 
what all men value. They saw anew the dignity of a 
manhood which counted itself rich so long as it could 
follow Christ, and which recked nothing lost so long as 
it might maintain its communion with the living God. 
The monks were preaching with the eloquence of deeds 
the dignity of manhood, which keeps its self-respect 
because it keeps its fellowship with the Eternal, and 
which does not set its greatness in the possession of 
outward things. 

Anselm went back from his visit to the archbishop 
at Rouen to take up his duties sorrowfully enough. 
Nor had he long to wait before he learned the new 
burden which was to be laid on him ; for when 



52 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

Herlwin died in 1078, the monks assembled in chapter 
unanimously elected their prior to the vacant office. 
Anselm prayed them to have mercy on him. He 
pleaded unfitness for the duty. They would not listen. 
He flung himself on his face before them on the stone 
pavement. They answered his appeal by prostrating 
themselves round the prostrate figure. Some of the 
later biographers believe that the prior's reluctance 
was due to the fact that the pope had recently formu- 
lated strict orders against bishops and abbots accepting 
investiture from laymen, and that the new abbot 
foresaw trouble with his superior the Duke of Nor- 
mandy. But it was never Anselm's habit to surrender 
a principle he had once accepted, and since the duke 
never surrendered the right of investiture, this only 
makes it difficult to account for Anselm's final consent. 
The reason for refusal seems to have been much 
simpler. The abbey with its increased numbers and 
influence required for its head a man with capacity 
for afl'airs, and the abbot-elect was shrewd enough 
in his self -judgment to know his unfitness. When his 
brethren insisted, however, his reluctance was overcome. 
In February 1079 Anselm was consecrated to be abbot 
by Gilbert, bishop of Evreux. 

He had yielded out of that monastic obedience 
which seemed to him the root of all virtue. But his 
was not the type of mind which could interest itself 
in many of the details which fell to the care of a 
Norman abbot. In the exercise of his office he was 
required to sit as judge over the tenants of the abbey 
property and to take his place as representative of the 
monastery in some civil courts. At these the love of 
the Norman for litigation found full expression. The 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 53 

undeveloped code left room for delightful discussion on 
minutiae of procedure and justice. But men noted how 
these things wearied the abbot of Le Bee and how, 
when the wrangling grew hot over trifles, he leaned 
back in his chair and fell asleep. They noted too how, 
when the litigants had bewildered themselves hope- 
lessly, the sleeper would often awake and show 
a surprising power of brushing aside the heap of 
sophistries and bringing men back to the heart of 
the question. 

These were not the matters which interested him. 
But when men talked of some difficult passage in Holy 
Writ or of some problem in theology they never found 
their abbot asleep. To such subjects his mind naturally 
reverted. They were his mental food. On them his 
talk flowed easily and abundantly. . Sometimes the 
flow is too easy ; the discussion is subtle but barren, 
the light is a soft glow rather than a flash. He loved 
to talk. Some of his parables, evidently the outcome of 
daily life or wayside incidents, have been preserved by 
his secretary, and many have the quaintness though 
most lack the pungency of Luther's table-talk. With 
his familiar friends the intercourse was very close. 
There is a convent-idyl of the two friends, Gondulf, 
afterwards bishop of Rochester, and Anselm: " They had 
in God one heart and one soul, frequent talk on 
spiritual things, much outpouring of tears during their 
talk, mutual encouragement ever to climb higher, a 
holy emulation to outstrip each other in God's work. 
Yet Anselm as the more learned in Scripture was the 
more frequent talker : Gondulf as the more liberal in 
tears excelled the other in weeping. The one talked, 
the other wept." The generous talker was accustomed 



54 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

to complain that Gondulf was too eager to whet his 
knife at his brother's stone ; but the talkers are rarely 
just in their estimate of the amount a good listener 
contributes to a conversation. 

When the abbot visited a neighbouring convent, it 
became the habit to invite him to address the brethren 
assembled in the chapter-house. Some of his sermons 
have been preserved by the loving diligence of Eadmer. 
They have a character of their own. The speaker 
prelects rather than preaches. Gravely he elaborates, 
sometimes over-elaborates his points, driving them home 
by weight of argument rather than by appeal to the 
emotions. It is necessary to remember the audiences 
to which they were addressed, if one would really taste 
them. They were spoken to men who had already 
chosen their life-course and believed that in this 
troubled life they had found the one sure haven. 
Calmly they came together, the knight whose cowl 
replaced a helmet and whose feet rang no more on 
the pavement, the peasant who had left his plough to 
labour in the vineyard of God. They ranged themselves 
in the chapter-house, a group of earnest-eyed men to 
whom life had discovered its awe and who believed 
they had found its aim. They would listen to one who 
had better power than they to interpret their own 
thoughts to themselves and to make clear to them how 
their new life should be lived. And after this fashion 
the abbot of Le Bee spoke to them : — 

"Amid other things weigh the miseries of this 
present life, and consider with how much care man 
must live among them. Consider that thou art fellow 
to him of whom Scripture saith ' man's way is hid, and 
God has surrounded him with darkness.' For in truth 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 5 5 

thou art surrounded by a deep blindness of ignorance, 
who knowest not how God weighs thy works, and 
what end thou shalt find thereto. Man knows not, 
saith Solomon, whether he be worthy of hate or love, 
but all things are kept secret to the end. Imagine 
that thou seest a valley, deep, dark, having all manner 
of torment in its depths. Conceive thereover a bridge, 
very long, yet of but a foot in breadth. Should any- 
one be compelled to cross this so narrow high and 
perilous bridge, whose eyes were bound that he could 
not see his steps, whose hands were tied behind his 
back that he could not feel his track with a stick — 
what fear and heart-sinking thinkest thou would he 
not realise ? Would there be to him any room for joy 
or gladness, that I say not exultation ? I trow not. 
All pride were done away, vain-glory were banished, 
the dark cloud of death alone would be turned over in 
the mind. Imagine further monsters of cruel birds 
flying round the bridge and seeking to drag down into 
the deeps that passenger. Should not fear be increased 
thereby ? What if, even as he passed, the slabs should 
drop at his heels ? Were not greater anxiety driven 
into him ? 

"Yet think over the parable and let thy mind be 
bound by divine fear. The valley is hell, immeasur- 
ably deep, dark with gloomy shadow. Thither flow 
together all miseries. There every softening influence 
is absent. All that can terrify and torment is present. 
The bridge perilous is this present life from which 
whosoever lives ill plunges into hell. The slabs which 
drop away are the days of life, which so pass by that 
they can never be re-lived, but as they vanish drive us 
on to the end. The birds are evil spirits, whose whole 



56 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

desire it is to cast down men to hell. We are the 
passengers, blind with the darkness of ignorance, bound 
as with a heavy chain by the difficulty o£ a good life. 
Consider therefore whether thou being in such peril 
shouldest not cry with all thy heart to thy Maker, that 
warded by His protection thou mayest cry in the crowds 
of opposition, ' The Lord is my light and my salvation, 
whom shall I fear ? ' Light, I say, against blindness, 
salvation against difficulty. For these are the two 
evils into which our first parent cast us, so that we see 
neither whither we go nor what we should do, so that, 
even when we partially see, being weighted with 
difficulty we cannot fulfil what we rightly know. 
Consider these things, O my soul, think of them, let 
thy mind be daily exercised in them. Intent on these 
recall thyself from thoughts of worthless things and 
kindle with the fire of holy fear and blessed love to flee 
from these evils and gain eternal good." 

It is significant to remember the time in which 
words like these were spoken by Anselm to his monks. 
The contrast between the utterance and the circum- 
stances in which it was spoken makes the strength 
and weakness of monasticism more manifest. William 
of Normandy and England was striving to curb 
the disorder which his wanton invasion had caused. 
Lanfranc was busy across the Channel with great 
plans by which he hoped to quicken into new life 
English religion. Hildebrand, long the master behind 
the throne, had at last assumed the papal tiara as 
Gregory vii. He had fulminated against simony and 
denounced the marriage of the clergy. He had pro- 
hibited lay investiture at the Roman Council of 1075. 
He was offering bold defiance to the Saracen invader 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 57 

in the South, and bolder defiance to the German 
Emperor on the North. He was striving to use the 
Conqueror and the Normans in Italy for his schemes. 
His own Rome had risen against him, and one wild 
Christmas Eve had seen him dragged from the altar 
across the city to a dungeon, only to go back after his 
liberation and finish the interrupted Mass. Henry had 
deposed his adversary at the Council of Worms and 
had been beaten to his knees. Of these things Europe 
was ringing, and men were wondering whereto they 
would grow. A new order was being born with many 
travail-pangs. So far as Anselm's correspondence 
reveals, these and the like events might have been 
happening in another century. And it is not difficult to 
understand how men bewildered in the storms of a 
difficult time listened eagerly to the quiet voice which 
called to them out of the convent and bade them 
remember the inward victory without which nothing 
was won. 

Yet the abbot does not escape from the monkish 
selfishness which spoils men who try to forget the 
world. There is a jarring note in a letter to Henry, 
afterwards the head of Battle Abbey. In it Anselm 
bade Henry give up the idea of a journey to Italy, 
though its purpose was to free his sister from bondage, 
on the naked ground that the task would imperil his 
own soul. One is glad to know that Henry disobeyed. 
Again he urged a certain William to leave war and 
become a soldier of Jesus Christ and not be held back 
from instant obedience by the vain hope of saving 
his brother's soul. The man had imbued himself so 
thoroughly with the monastic life that not only had its 
habits become a second nature, but no other life seemed 



58 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

to contain any ideal of Christian service. These and 
similar letters prove how the system was producing its 
inevitable result even on this wholesome spirit. For- 
tunately for his soul's health the Church was soon to 
summon him back into the larger air of temptation 
and opportunity. 

The man's real interest was in inward religion. 
There he was at home. If he turned away to consider 
other interests, it was because he must. The letters 
bear evidence to this. Not that he spoke much of 
experiences and feelings. The interest betrayed itself 
in a more natural form, in the high standard by which 
he judged all human endeavour and strove to test his 
own, in the lofty aims he sought to set before men, in 
the sincerity of his affection and in the perfect simplicity 
of his heart. 

The inward flame of devotion which maintained his 
work burns most clearly in his so-called Meditations, 
which contain to our mind some of Anselm's best 
religious work. They are very unequal, variant in 
form, variant in matter, as a collection which had not 
the advantage of its author's revision could not fail to 
be. Here one finds the first sketch of the Cur Deus 
Homo, afterwards to be elaborated into a treatise. 
There one meets with exegetical studies which show 
an acute mind working with almost no critical ap- 
paratus. Again what begins as a meditation will pass 
into a prayer or rise into an act of adoration. But 
because his thought was so often busied with the 
misery and guilt of man and was so conscious of the 
limitations to all human knowledge, his piety has a 
chaste reverence even when it is most fervid. Because 
the thought of the merit of Christ and of Christ in His 



MONK, PRIOR, AND ABBOT 59 

human life was his deepest comfort there does not 
appear the recoil from blank despair to morbid 
ecstasy which makes a great deal of the monastic 
devotion so difficult reading to those who have not 
been brought up in the same school. And there is an 
ethical strain in the work which gives virility to the 
most passionate devotion and which lifts it beyond the 
convent's narrow room so that it becomes universal in 
its appeal. 

One lingers over this period, when the abbot was still 
in what he called his nest, before a larger duty and a 
more varied activity had called him to a wider field. 
It is not difficult to understand how a man with his 
affectionate nature and studious disposition must have 
looked back wistfully to a time which offered such 
scope to both. The convent itself remembered those 
days and adorned them with quaint tales, the grotesque- 
ness of some of which cannot hide their beauty. They 
told how a sick brother, a bitter opponent of the prior, 
once disturbed the house, then in the peace of its mid- 
day siesta, with the cry that he was beset by two 
wolves which were attempting to throttle him. In- 
stinctively men ran for the prior whom they found 
correcting his beloved manuscripts in the cloister. It 
needed but that he should make the sign of the cross 
in the doorway of the infirmary for the sick monk to 
see a flame dart from his lips and put the wolves to 
flight. Again, one who went about nightly duties in 
the convent and roused the monks to their office saw 
the abbot kneeling at his private prayers in the chapter- 
. house, and his head was encircled with flame. Wonder- 
ing whether all he saw was a vision, the monk stole up 
to his superior's room only to find it empty. They 



6o ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

told again how the abbot with a few monks once 
arrived at the house of Walter Tirrel. As the visit had 
been unexpected their host was unprepared and the 
provision at table ran short. Tirrel abounded in 
apologies, but Anselm bade him not give himself any- 
trouble because provision was even then on its way to 
the castle. And in truth a servant arrived soon after, 
and brought with him a sturgeon which of course was 
the largest that had been taken in the district for 
many years. 

We have fortunately reached a stage at which such 
tales can be read without anger or contempt. In an 
age which in nowise vexed itself about the difference 
between the fixed laws of Nature and the direct inter- 
ference of God, men recognised that this man stood 
nearer the Almighty Source of all strength and good 
than themselves, and they uttered their conviction 
in the way which appealed to their minds. Anselm's 
sanctity, his resolute patience, his self-abnegation, his 
simple confidence in the will of God, his inability not 
to help other men, were so manifest that they won to 
uttermost reverence the hearts of the rude Normans 
who came to Le Bee that they might find God, and who, 
as most men do, found Him mediated to them through 
the word and life of one who was at once so like and so 
unlike themselves. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Monologium and Proslogium 

The first of the writings which make Anselm recog- 
nised as the leader of a new movement in thought 
were produced when he was prior and abbot at Le Bee. 
Like most of his other work this came to seek him 
rather than needed to be sought by him. Several of 
the younger men who had received their theological 
training in the Norman monastery felt the difference 
between their early tutor's method and that of the few 
books to which they had access. From the convents, 
for the service of which his training had fitted them, 
they wrote to request copies of the lectures which had 
roused their minds to think. Reluctantly the abbot 
consented, but for a time persisted in sending out his 
writings anonymously. Only when he found how 
easily errors multiplied, did he consent to attach his 
name to authoritative copies. Perhaps, too, the claim 
of the heretic Roscelin that the famous teacher of Le 
Bee agreed with his views on the doctrine of the 
Trinity helped to discover how a false humility brings 
perils with it, and made Anselm more willing to declare 
his actual opinions. 

Europe was beginning to awake from its intellectual 
sleep. The minds of men were stirring to inquire into 

61 



62 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

the dogmas they had long been content to accept. 
There was a joyous confidence in the way they flung 
themselves on the world-old problems. They had 
yet to learn the limitations of their powers. And 
Anselm delighted in his task of education. His power 
lay in quickening the intelligence of the youths who 
were committed to his care. The mind of young men, 
he was accustomed to say, is like wax which is of the 
right consistence to receive and to retain the impression 
which one wishes to make on it. The mind of children 
is too fluid, easier to impress but more impatient to retain 
the impression. The mind of old men has so hardened 
that it keeps all it has once received but refuses to 
accept anything new. Yet the abbot was not unaware 
that part of his preference for such students was due to 
his own inability to give the teaching which younger 
children need. In a letter to one of his favourite 
pupils, who was then probably acting as secretary to 
Lanfranc in England, he expressed the pleasure it gave 
him to hear that Maurice was using the opportunity to 
benefit from the instruction of a famous grammarian, 
Arnulf. "You know how I was always weak in 
declinatio, and incapable of labouring with you in the 
minutiae of grammar." His mind was not that of the 
exact scholar, it was interested in principles rather 
than nice exactness of detail. Of anything which did 
not relate itself to a principle he was soon weary. His 
power lay in rousing and guiding minds which were 
beginning to feel out after such principles. 

The method of education prevalent in the monasteries 
of the time helped a real thinker to impress his person- 
ality upon his students, and the fact that the school 
at Le Bee was new gave its founders a freer hand. 



THE MONOLOGIUM AND PROSLOGIUM 63 

Books were then a rare and costly luxury. All the 
chroniclers unite in praising the library at Le Bee. 
But an exact catalogue of its contents at least a genera- 
tion later than Lanfranc's priorate has been preserved, 
and it makes the modern reader wonder what poverty 
was, if this was counted riches. The list contains the 
names of forty authors of whom more than three- 
fourths are ecclesiastical. Even copies of Holy 
Scripture must have been difficult to procure, for, when 
Archbishop Lanfranc wrote to request the convent 
copy of St. Paul's Epistles, Anselm sent it with a very 
visible reluctance and only " in obedience to his orders." 
Such books as were to be had had been transcribed by 
the monks. An illiterate age did not merely write 
nothing of its own but was careless about the correct 
copying of older works. The manuscripts were 
crammed with errors. Long into the night by the 
flickering and scanty light of a candle the prior sat 
busy with the toil of transcription and with the more 
laborious toil of collating and correcting his volumes. 
Again and again in his letters appear petitions for 
books of all kinds. The Rule of St. Dunstan, the 
Epistles of St. Paul, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates — 
they form a curious medley. But especially does he 
beg that the copies made and sent to him should be 
accurate. " Send me a copy of the Aphorisms. If 
you are unable to copy it all, copy a part. But above 
all send it me without errors. I would rather have a 
part correctly copied than the whole crammed with 
mistakes." 

In this dearth of books the convent teachers were 
thrown, back on the Socratic method of question and 
answer which is easy only in appearance, and which 



64 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

when honestly and fearlessly used is the surest means 
of attaining clarity of thought. That Anselm pre- 
served the form in some of his published works (the 
Guv Dews ffovio is written throughout in the form of 
a dialogue) is the proof of how he had used and valued 
the method in practice. Occasionally the dialogues 
do not escape from the peculiar vice of the method, 
especially when it is employed within such surround- 
ings as a convent affords, the vice of pursuing a 
principle into needless minutiae. The convent school 
and the synagogue school have many things in com- 
mon. And often one is conscious of the atmosphere 
which easily steals into the minds of men who having 
shut themselves off from the world's larger interests 
come to believe that a logical definition determines 
everything and forget that the world is not governed 
by the rules of Aristotle. But at least the teacher if 
he could think himself had the opportunity of laying 
himself alongside the minds of his students and of 
encouraging them to test his results. The method 
was even more fruitful than its results could be. It 
quickened thought. Before Anselm's day theologians 
were content to quote, and a citation from St. Augustine 
was sufficient to decide a question : after his day they 
began anew to think for themselves. 

A contemporary declares with just a touch of envy 
or of contempt in his tone that all the monks of Le 
Bee were philosophers. And as scholars spread abroad 
from the Norman school, one cannot help suspecting 
that their teacher was shrewd enough in his judgment 
of human nature to dread sending into the monkish 
world a set of theological prigs who might disdain the 
simpler piety of other convents and look contempt- 



THE MONOLOGIUM AND PROSLOGIUM 65 

uously on men who were nearer God than they because 
these simple monks could not reason according to the 
schools. Their old master was too loyal to them and 
their common mission not to point out the danger. It is 
not difficult to read between the lines of a letter written 
to a pupil in answer to one in which the monk had 
expressed the wish to leave his present convent, be- 
cause it did not offer scope enough for his intellectual 
powers. Very gently but firmly Anselm bade him 
remember that he might also consider the advantage 
of finding a place in which he should have opportunity 
to learn, and that the very place in which he then was 
might offer the opportunities he needed. 

The surest preservative, however, against the vagaries 
of such men was the influence of their teacher's pro- 
foundly religious spirit. With Anselm exact thought 
on the mysteries of God and His relations to the world 
and to men is not pursued as an intellectual satisfac- 
tion nor regarded as an end in itself. It is the means 
toward the larger end of setting the spirit into right 
relations to its Source and Father. Metaphysician 
though he was, with a bent toward the severest 
thought on the most difficult subjects, delighting in 
the exercise of his own disciplined intellect, his 
instincts were religious. This appears even in the 
form of the Proslogium. When he has, as he be- 
lieves, established the proof of God's existence, he 
breaks out into an ascription of praise which has a 
lyric note in it, because God has thus revealed Himself 
to one of His creatures. Only this is rare. Anselm 
did not turn aside, like many Romanist and Evangel- 
ical theologians, to interlard his severer thoughts with 
devout expressions. He did not feel the need to turn 
5 



66 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

aside. To him thought on God, His attributes, His 
will, was an act of piety. And in a manner peculiar 
to himself he has succeeded in saturating many of 
his austerest discussions with his own devout temper. 
On the other hand the genuine thought and high 
ethical purpose which inform all his devotional writ- 
ings have helped to give them endurance. The prayers 
and meditations of the prior of Le Bee were in con- 
stant use through the Middle Age. Any mediaeval 
collection of devotional literature is sure to contain 
several of Anselm's compositions. 

Alongside of this devotion went a confidence in the 
power and validity of human thought which lends an 
extraordinary boldness to much of his speculation. 
Anselm is no rationalist in the usual sense of the 
word. There are some truths which it is beyond the 
human intellect to comprehend, and to which though 
it finds itself unable to comprehend them it must still 
bow. How these are mediated to men and what is 
the ground on which they must be received he does 
not stop to inquire. That they were contained in 
Holy Scripture and in the Creeds of the Church 
would have seemed a sufiicient answer. Men had not 
the historical and critical knowledge which raised 
both questions. To Anselm the Church's dogma was 
divine in its origin and in its authority. But human 
intelligence was equally divine in its origin, and within 
limits in its authority also. The truth which is re- 
ceived by faith and the truth which is discovered by 
intelligence are both of God. They cannot finally 
conflict, simply because they come from the same 
Source. Should they appear to conflict, as they 
often do appear, the devout must hold by faith, 



THE MONOLOGIUM AND PROSLOGIUM 6^ 

though he need not surrender the effort to attain 
to the reconciliation. Credo id intelligam ("I 
believe that I may understand ") is his unhesitating 
avowal. This position sets the monk very far from 
the attitude credo quia absurdu7}i (" I believe because 
it is incapable of being understood "). That was some- 
times the refuge of scepticism, sometimes the defiance 
of ignorance. Anselm was no sceptic. All things in 
the universe were only real so far as they were the 
outcome of God. As man's mind was the crown of 
God's world, human thought was capable of attaining 
a real and valid knowledge of eternal things. Yet 
the position so stated proves no less clearly that this 
devout Churchman had been vexed by questions he 
was unable to answer and doubts he was incompetent 
to solve. The dogmas of the Church did not possess 
to him — and what he was able to express was being 
dimly felt by an increasing number — that power of 
self -evidence which rendered them independent of any 
outward support. Men felt, and Anselm among the 
rest, that they needed some support. Scholasticism 
was the attempt to supply it. 

The Monologiuvi, or, according to its subtitle, Faith 
seeking Understanding, is a meditation of tlie soul on 
God. It attempts, putting aside all Scripture auth- 
ority, to prove the being of God in the light of pure 
reason, and then to define His nature and attributes. 
His relation to the world and men. The book begins 
with a proof of God's being as implicit in ordinary 
experience. All things which are must have a cause. 
What a man desires at any particular moment is some 
good, something which has intrinsic value or only 
supposed advantage. But all these particular goods 



68 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

must have a common origin in some original good. 
So is it with everything which rouses man's reverence. 
What quickens such reverence proves the existence of 
some original sublime. Anselm labours and elaborates 
this statement and then argues that all particular 
beings must have their origin in what is either 
manifold or one. To think of the final cause as 
manifold is to end in hopeless contradiction. Reci- 
procal dependence which were one solution is an ab- 
surdity. And entire equality of those manifold final 
causes would inevitably, if it were carried to its issue, 
imply essential unity. There is then but one final 
cause which is God, who Himself is at once self-caused 
and the cause without which nothing else can exist. 
God owes His being to none other than Himself ; all 
other existences in the universe owe not only their 
being but their continuance to His necessary being. 

And the unity of God is absolute. His attributes 
cannot be distinct from Himself, nor yet can His unity 
be one which is made up of parts. For that which is 
made up of parts, or which has attributes that can 
be thought as distinct from itself, is conditioned by 
its parts or by its attributes. But God is uncondi- 
tioned. He has therefore no parts, and His attributes 
are but methods by which we name His being. He 
cannot be said to have truth, and even to say that He 
is true is to run the risk of limiting His simple and 
immutable being. 

How then did the universe of contingent appearance 
come to be, and how can it be thought in relation to 
God? There is but one method, the creation out of 
nothing by the fiat of God. In his teaching about 
creation Anselm follows Augustine closely except 



THE MONOLOGIUM AND PROSLOGIUM 6g 

that he adds certain Platonic elements to the great 
African's doctrine. The creation out of nothing in- 
volves beginning in time. There was then a time 
before which the universe of created things had no 
existence by itself. But this does not imply that 
it had no existence whatever. In a sense it existed 
from the beginning. It existed in God's thought even 
before all time. That God saw that the universe 
would come into being, that God not only foresaw 
its actual existence but had even predetermined its 
coming into existence constituted for the universe an 
eternal existence. In this sense it was before it 
hecarae. Anselm does not succeed any more than 
many another in avoiding Pantheism in his repre- 
sentation of God's relation to the world of contingent 
things. That is due to his profound conviction of the 
essential unreality of all things without God. The 
world possesses reality only so far as it expresses 
spiritual truths and embodies spiritual relations, the 
source and explanation of which is God. The same 
conviction is also the foundation and the truth of 
his ontological argument. The relative implies the 
absolute, or else itself has no reality. No theologian 
who has ever been possessed by that conviction and 
has tried to give it utterance has escaped the lapse 
into Pantheistic modes of expression. 

There follows a discussion on God's nature, and first on 
His attributes. This moves on familiar lines ; but one 
thing is noteworthy in it. Anselm's strongly monistic 
position which led him to emphasise with special force 
the simplicity and immutability of the divine nature 
causes him peculiar difficulty when he has to discuss 
omnipresence and eternity. Because of His undivided 



JO ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

unity of essence God cannot be omnipresent in the 
sense that He is distributed in all places and at all 
times. Omnipresence can only mean that the divine 
undivided essence is at once in every moment of time 
and at every point of space. So it is with eternity. 
God is everlastingly. Anselm states the conclusions to 
which his rigid logic has driven him, but does not hide 
from himself how largely meaningless or how largely 
symbolic such words as essence and substance, space 
and time must be when applied to the Absolute. 

The second great section dealing with God's nature 
is occupied with a discussion of the Trinity. On 
this subject the monk had evidently brooded long. 
The question was rousing new interest in the Church, 
which in the confidence of its long untried powers 
of speculation ventured to discuss the highest sub- 
jects. Roscelin was teaching what was counted 
heresy. Anselm puts out his whole strength when 
he deals with it. " The Word is the object of eternal 
thought : it is God in so far as He is thought 
conceived or comprehended by Himself. The Holy 
Spirit is the love of God for the Word and of the 
Word for God, the love which God bears Himself." 
In general the Church in the discussion of this high 
subject has varied between a position which insisted 
on the distinction of the " persons " to the neglect of 
the essential unity, and one which in the fear of 
verging on Tritheism has emphasised unduly the 
unity of the divine nature. Anselm's whole discussion 
leaves the impression that he has not escaped the 
latter. It is difiicult to distinguish his Word and 
Spirit from modes of the divine activity. 

After the Monologiuin was written, however, its 



THE MONOLOGIUM AND PROSLOGIUM 71 

author was not satisfied with the part of his work 
which was concerned with the argument for the being 
of God. He sought one single argument which might 
estabHsh that at once. Probably the monk's acute 
intelligence, which was not destitute of a touch of 
scepticism, had suggested to him that it was possible 
to decline the step on which everything was based. 
The empiricist might decline to go beyond phenomena, 
might question the existence of anything beyond them, 
might suggest that the supposed reality behind them 
was nothing more than an idea. Nominalism was not 
yet full-blown; but what gains full expression in a 
later generation is often felt already by an earlier. 

The thought of a single proof for God's existence 
troubled the philosopher- monk. It would not suffer 
him to sleep, and made him even more careless than 
usual about his meals. It hovered between him and 
the manuscripts which he corrected. Even the common 
prayer became at times a routine duty, while his real 
thoughts followed the elusive phantom. So command- 
ing did it grow that the man wondered whether it 
might not be a temptation of the devil, and tried to 
put it away from his thoughts as such. But every- 
thing was in vain. At last, after many painful days 
and troubled nights, the idea which he had pursued 
so long came to him during vigil. Hastily, lest the 
idea should escape as swiftly as it had come, he seized 
his tablets and committed a rough sketch of the argu- 
ment to the wax. But an evil fate pursued the work. 
The monk to whom the sketch was entrusted lost it, 
and a second copy suffered as evil a fate. The brother 
to whom this tablet was delivered hid the precious 
trust in his bed, only to find it dashed in fragments 



72 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

along the dormitory floor. The fragments were pieced 
together and from them Anselm wrote out on parch- 
ment his famous argument for the being of God. He 
cast this in the syllogistic form so loved of the School- 
men, a form which was incompetent to express thoughts 
of that type. The very hardness of the form may 
have helped in later years to conceal the meaning of 
the idea. 

Scripture, so the Proslogium urges, is right when it 
calls him who denies God's being a fool, for his very 
denial implies a self-contradiction. He stultifies him- 
self by the statement though he may not realise the 
fact. The man has in his mind the thought of the 
highest of all beings, than which none greater can be 
conceived. The idea of this " highest thinkable " is in 
his mind, since it is thinkable. But this highest 
thinkable must exist not only in the mind but also 
in reality. If it do not exist in reality, there must be 
something higher than it which can be thought, for 
that which has actual existence is higher than that 
which does not exist otherwise than in thought. That 
is, the thought is not really the highest thinkable. 
Let the idea then be really the highest thinkable, and 
it must exist in fact as well as in the mind. 

Further, contingent existence is lower than necessary 
existence. If then the highest thinkable exists in 
fact, it must also exist necessarily, alike in thought 
and in fact. This has the idea of God, at least con- 
tains enough of the idea of God to prove that he was 
indeed a fool who denied His existence. 

The argument was no sooner published than it 
roused opposition. Gaunilo, a monk in the neigh- 
bouring convent of Marmoutier, entered the lists with 



THE MONOLOGIUM AND PROSLOGIUM 73 

an apology for the fool. An illustration from the 
monk's pamphlet is more familiar than the general 
bearing of his argument. " Some say that somewhere 
in the ocean is an island, which from the difficulty or 
rather impossibility of discovering it (since it does not 
exist) they call the Lost Island, whereof they fable 
much more than of the Isles of the Blest concerning the 
inestimable fecundity in natural resources and all 
manner of desirable things by which it excels whatever 
lands men till. I may hear of that island and under- 
stand what I hear, but if my informant were to add, 
'Now you cannot doubt that such an island exists 
somewhere in fact as well as in your mind, because 
to exist in fact is more excellent than to exist in ima- 
gination, and if it did not really exist any land which 
does would be more excellent than it,' I should either 
think he jested or be at a loss to say whether he or 
I were the more silly." The analogy was an imperfect 
one, nor had Anselm much difficulty in pointing out 
the fact. But the real edge of Gaunilo's attack was 
not so easily turned, nor does it seem to be turned in 
his opponent's reply. The monk of Marmoutier wrote 
so obscure a monkish Latin that any conception of his 
meaning is offered with considerable hesitation. He 
lays his finger on the ambiguity about having a 
certain thought in the mind. Widen the content of 
that or any other thought as much as you please, you 
have not succeeded in making it any more than a 
thought. You cannot thereby confer on it objective 
reality. Its existence is certain, but only its existence 
as thought. Men can pass from thought to thought, 
from existence to existence, but not from thought to 
existence. To add to the content of thought does no 



74 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

more in the end than add to thought What finally is 
secured by Anselm's argument is the existence of the 
God -idea. But that of the existence of which the 
theologian desires to be convinced is the personal 
Deity. 

This is not the place even to attempt a discussion of 
the final value of this position, but one fundamental 
characteristic of Anselm's two books on the existence 
of God deserves notice. They mark the first real 
efibrt in Western theology to reach a surer founda- 
tion than Augustine offered. Augustine, who until 
this time had dominated all the theology of the Western 
Church, a citation from whom was sufficient to close 
discussion, never overcame the dualism of his Mani- 
chaean training. Anselm is impatient of all dualism. 
He is never content till he has transcended it. Hence 
sin has to him no positive existence, but is a mere 
negation. His conception of the Trinity runs the 
risk of sacrificing the distinctions of the three persons 
to their essential unity. The created universe has no 
reality save so far as it embodies some word or purpose 
of God, and his doctrine of creation comes perilously 
near to Pantheism. He boldly denies the hard dis- 
tinction between thought and being. 

All these may be counted heresies in theology and 
philosophy, or if not full-blown heresies at least the 
buds of error. But the work of Anselm helped to 
bring the idea of God's immanence into clearer place 
in the Church's theology. God was in and through 
His whole creation. Without Him the world could 
have no reality. And the crown of all the world was 
man, who as rational and self-conscious was the highest 
expression of the divine purpose. Not only is it man's 



THE MONOLOGIUM AND PROSLOGIUM 75 

duty to seek and serve his Creator, it is also possible to 
him because God and he are not far off. Inadequate 
therefore man's thoughts may be ; when concerned with 
God and His nature, inadequate they must be, because 
they are human. But true within their limitations 
man's thoughts must as surely be, because God has been 
in them. There is in Anselm nothing of the latent 
scepticism about the validity of human thought which 
lurks in so much of the later Roman and mediaeval 
theology. Faith was the gift of God, but intelligence 
was no less the sign of His indwelling presence. The 
two could not finally conflict. 

And is it not this which lies at the foundation of the 
Proslogiiom ? State the argument as a syllogism and 
with Scotus Erigena it will always be easy to point out 
how the conclusion is subsumed in the premiss. But 
the finite has no reality apart from the infinite. The 
relative and contingent imply the absolute and necessary. 
Unless we deny in any real sense of the word the ex- 
istence of the finite human spirit, we must accept the 
existence of an infinite spirit. If men are not to be 
shut up to absolute Pyrrhonism, they must make the 
leap somewhere. Anselm made it with the utmost 
boldness. It is quite easy and interesting to argue 
that the existence of all things including man is no 
more than a passing shadow, because the only ground 
we have for holding the opposite is rational necessity. 
But, when a man holds this conviction, he has ceased 
to think rationally. Anselm would apply to him the 
scriptural epithet. 



CHAPTER V 

The Chuech in England 

The period of comparative retirement in the monastery- 
was soon to come to an end for Anselm. The world 
on which the man had turned his back in order to 
find God in solitude claimed the fugitive. So it 
chanced again and again in that age of violent and 
picturesque contrasts. Though the barons were coarse, 
though their religion often deserved no higher name 
than superstition, they recognised in the monks 
the note of moral earnestness which to the ignorant 
seems to be everything. In straits they turned to 
the convents for their confessors, and often for their 
bishops. To the monks they gave the charge over their 
souls, disobeyed them, fretted against their authority, 
were awed by finding the powerlessness of vulgar 
threats ao^ainst their resolution, and were leavened 
unconsciously by their principles. Many a monk in 
such circumstances may well have been perplexed, as 
Anselm's letters prove him to have been, by the diffi- 
culty of reconciling his purpose as a monk with his 
work as an ecclesiastic. The desire to renounce the 
world was a divine inspiration : the summons to 
govern the Church and thus return to the world was 
no less certainly a call from God. And as humble 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 77 

men must do, they solved the contradiction by- 
obedience and learned to distrust their own desires. 
Many who were as unselfish in spirit as the abbot 
of Le Bee learned from the contradiction to see their 
new dignity in the light of a trial and to wear the 
bishop's mitre as a test of their Christian character. 

The Church, when she was gathering all her strength 
to the fight with what is called feudalism and to the 
assertion of a kingdom which is not of this world, 
could not afford to leave a man like Anselm in the 
peace of his convent. Such a man was a weapon 
tempered to her purpose. Ill equipped though he 
might be for the struggle by the habits of his thought, 
he was splendidly equipped by the habits of his life. 
His was rather the skill which knows how to resist 
than that which is capable of attacking. He might 
be incapable of arriving at a solution which, like most 
working solutions between two great living forces, was 
sure to take the form of a compromise. His mind 
was too dogmatic for any compromise. But he was 
equally incapable of betraying a principle he had once 
maintained. The methods of the practical Churchman 
were foreign to him, the methods of one who is con- 
tent to secure the admission of a principle under an 
apparent concession, and who can afford to leave time 
to work for his cause in bringing the principle to 
its inevitable development. The monk had a blunt 
habit of stating his whole thought with all that it 
implied. To him the admission of the germ involved 
the acceptance of the conclusion; and he stated the 
conclusion. He really believed that average men are 
governed by reason, and thought that logic has a 
great deal to do with the management of affairs. 



78 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

His excuse must be that he had lived in the cloister, 
and even there had had his closest association with men 
who came to him seeking after truth. He had not 
had the opportunity to learn how largely self-interest 
and prejudice govern men even in connection with 
ecclesiastical affairs. On the other hand, and therein 
lay his strength for the Church, when he had once 
taken up his position, he was immovable. Nothing 
but the proof of his being in the wrong could stir 
him from his place. It does not seem to have 
occurred to him that it was possible to betray a 
conviction for the sake of ease or personal advantage. 
An age when great principles were being fought out 
needed such men. 

It is necessary to go back in the matter of time 
in order to show how the opportunity which was 
to widen Anselm's sphere of activity came to him, 
and what were the circumstances in which it was 
to be his lot to work in England. William of Nor- 
mandy had married in 1062 the Countess Matilda 
of Flanders. But the two were related within the 
forbidden degrees. Since the pope could not prevent 
the marriage, he had excommunicated the disobedient 
couple and had laid the duke's lands under an inter- 
dict. William, whose love for his wife is the tenderest 
trait in a stern character and whose chastity is an 
especial honour in an unclean age, stubbornly re- 
fused to yield. Lanfranc, then prior in Le Bee, had 
been impelled by his legal instincts to utter a strong 
protest. The duke's anger flamed out against his 
opponent and included the convent in judgment. He 
insisted that the prior should be expelled, and gave 
orders that the convent homestead should be wrecked. 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 79 

He even seems to have come down in person in 
order to make sure that his orders were carried out. 
At least the duke was in the neighbourhood when Lan- 
franc set out on his exile, so that the two met. For 
his journey the convent had provided their prior with 
a lame horse which could scarce carry itself. When 
the two men met, the exile bowed deeply to his 
superior, " the lame horse bowing his head too at 
every step." William took no heed of the salute; 
but Lanfranc cheerily bade him take heed of the 
ready obedience given to his command, and added 
that if the duke desired to be more speedily rid of 
his subject, it was necessary to provide a better horse 
for the journey. Something in the audacious humour 
of the petition, some shame perhaps at having been 
betrayed into anger with a monk on a lame horse, 
stirred the sardonic duke to sudden laughter. The 
ice was broken. Lanfranc had what he wished, the 
opportunity to state his position; and so dexter- 
ously did he state it that William ended by com- 
missioning him to go to Rome and there patch up a 
peace with Pope Nicholas 11. The artificial sin was 
atoned for by an unreal repentance. William and 
Matilda had their way, were acknowledged by Holy 
Church as man and wife, and bought off inter- 
dict and excommunication by founding, the one the 
monastery of St. Stephen, the other the nunnery 
of the Holy Trinity in the town of Caen. Thence- 
forward Lanfranc was William's right - hand man 
in all Church affairs, and was admitted so far as 
any man ever was to the counsels of that lonely 
spirit. The duke promoted his new adviser to be 
head of St. Stephen's in 1062, and in 1070 shortly 



8o ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

after his conquest of England sent for him to be- 
come Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all 
England. 

The two men had work enough to employ all 
their energies in the new realm. The Church in 
England had sunk in education, in discipline, in 
spirituality. Already in Anglo-Saxon times it had 
lost independence alike of government and of dis- 
cipline. Church and State had become confused. 
The prelates met in the Witenagemot along with 
their fellow-dignitaries, the secular potentates. They 
held also their separate councils at the same periods. 
In a generation* when the spiritual power in the 
Church is strong and its spiritual aims are recog- 
nised such an arrangement may help to make men 
see how the laws of a kingdom are something more 
than a means for maintaining decent civil order, and 
ought to be a means towards realising the king- 
dom of heaven on earth. But in a generation when 
the Church grows weak in its special testimony, it 
will only result in its deeper secularisation. Such 
was the result then. And the fact that the separate 
episcopal councils met alongside of the civil had only 
brought it about that the decisions of the bishops 
were regarded as having no validity, unless they 
also received the royal sanction. 

It is well, however, to remember that most accounts 
we possess of the state of English religion in the 
century are derived from men of the conquering race 
or from men who were imbued with the new spirit of 
the rising monasticism. A story is told of how Her- 
fast, chaplain to the king and afterwards bishop of 
Thetford, visited Le Bee and was presented by Lan- 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 8i 

franc with a child's alphabet as a study fit for his 
capacity. The incident may only illustrate the in- 
solence to which culture gives sharper edge, and the 
prejudice which made the Norman incapable of seeing 
the sturdy qualities of Saxon piety. Yet when every 
allowance has been made, it would appear that the 
impulse of England's early conversion had spent itself 
and that the storms of conquest under Dane and 
Norman had brutalised the laity and lowered the 
tone of the clergy. 

William, who hated all disorder, was ready to 
give his help that the house of the Church should 
be set in order, but the help must be on his own 
terms. He was himself a devout man. He was too 
keen-sighted not to measure the enormous power which 
the Church could exert to help or hinder the aims 
he cherished in his new possessions. But the Con- 
queror was above all a masterful man. Alongside 
of his own he could brook no other will. The more 
clearly he saw the influence which the Church could 
exert, the less inclined was he to sufier the control 
of this strong organisation to pass into other hands 
than his own. Of his own initiative he appointed 
and deposed bishops. Stigand, the archbishop of 
Canterbury, was set aside. Within a few years there 
was but one bishop who was not a Norman. They 
were not bad bishops, for as his conduct to Lanfranc 
showed William had an eye for a man. But they 
were all chosen practically by himself. The dying 
speech put by Orderic into the king's lips may 
have been uttered or not. It represents at least the 
impression which William's ecclesiastical action had 
produced on his contemporaries. " Never have 
6 



82 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

I dishonoured mother- Church : on the contrary it has 
been the great desire of my life whenever occasion 
offered to show her respect. Never have I made 
traffic of ecclesiastical preferments ; and as to simony 
I have always detested and avoided it. In the choice 
of dignitaries I have tried to find out sound doctrine 
and meritorious life, and so far as in me lay I have 
trusted the government of the Church to the worthiest 
men that were to be had." The king's words about 
simony were true. As Church dignities grew more 
valuable the vice of purchasing preferment had crept 
in, and crept in most where the Church's tone was 
lowest. William hated it, partly because it offended 
his religious sense, partly because he was too strong 
a man not to despise that poor refuge of the men 
who cannot make their way by ability. Save in one 
instance there was never suspicion of simony in con- 
nection with any of the Conqueror's episcopal appoint- 
ments. But there is a deeper simony than the gift 
of money, and that is the surrender of a man's per- 
sonal convictions. Now no man whose ideas clashed 
with those of the king had any chance of rising to 
prominence in the Church. Many of his appointments 
were made from his court clergy, concerning whom 
he had already sure knowledge that their course of 
action would not run counter to his own. 

It helped to maintain the dependence of the higher 
clergy on the royal authority that so many of them 
were Normans, alien in thought and sympathy to 
their flocks. When Dom. Paul was appointed to 
St. Alban's, Anselm wrote to commiserate him on 
his banishment among barbarians, whose very lan- 
guage he could not speak. The gentle abbot bade 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 83 

him remember how by life if not by word he could 
still witness for his Master, and urged him not 
to oppress his tenants by being greedy about his 
revenues. That an abbot in a foreign monastery 
counted it necessary to offer such advice is eloquent 
as to the relations which existed between Norman 
Churchman and Saxon flock. Relations of this 
character could only result in making the higher 
clergy a class apart who looked to the king for 
support. 

It is fair to remember that the Conqueror was in 
a difficult position, and that his attitude towards the 
Church was not dictated merely by lust of power. 
He saw with the clearness of a man who had 
suffered from it the tendency of the feudal system 
to build up an oligarchy of narrow-minded but power- 
ful tyrants who considered nothing save the interests 
of their own order. The effort it had cost the duke 
to break dowm the barons' power in Normandy may 
have strengthened his resolution to do all in his 
power to prevent its equal development in England. 
There was no better counterweight than the higher 
clergy, whose brains and character could be cast 
into the scale against the gross bulk of the nobles. 
And at least it was the result, if it was not the 
purpose, of his policy that the clergy in England 
were driven to support, and to look for support 
from, the throne to which they owed their appoint- 
ment. The outcome of the policy can be seen in 
Anselm's later experiences. 

As little as William in questions relating to the 
Church would suffer interference from within, so 
little would he brook control from without. " There- 



84 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

fore he would not suffer any authority within his 
realm to accept the Roman pontiff as Apostolic father 
except at his bidding, or to receive his letters unless 
they had first been shown to himself." Hildebrand, 
shortly after he became pope, attempted to assert his 
authority by sending a legate to England. Hubert 
was commanded to remind the king of the services 
the holy see at the instigation of Hildebrand had 
rendered him by blessing the enterprise for the con- 
quest of England. The legate was to demand a 
return for the consecrated banner in the form of the 
payment of arrears of the " Peter's pence " and an 
oath of fealty to the pope. The answer was a curt, 
dignified, but firm refusal. " Thy legate Hubert, holy 
Father, came to me and warned me that I should 
render an oath of fealty to thee and thy successors, 
and that I should be more careful concerning the 
money which my predecessors were wont to send 
to the Roman Church. The one I allow, the other 
I do not. I refused and do refuse to give the oath, 
because I never promised it nor do I learn that my 
predecessors have ever rendered it to yours. The 
money, because I was busy for three years in France, 
has been carelessly collected. But since I have now 
by the Divine mercy returned to my kingdom, what 
has been collected is being forwarded by the afore- 
mentioned legate. The rest will be remitted as 
opportunity offers by the messengers of Lanfranc our 
faithful archbishop." When men on the Continent 
heard that money was sent from the kingdom, they 
said openly that England had become tributary to 
Rome. William did not trouble himself about 
the opinion of the Continent. He retained the 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 85 

substance of his independence, and could let the 
shadow go. 

Hildebrand baffled on this side sought to reach the 
king through the archbishop. He sent a somewhat 
imperious message summoning the latter to Rome. 
Lanfranc hesitated, but finally declined to come. The 
cautious terms in which the refusal is couched rouse 
the suspicion that William had read the letter and 
make it certain that the writer dared not go. And a 
clause or two in the pope's reply in which he rebukes 
his correspondent for over-subservience to the ruling 
powers prove that Hildebrand knew it. But the 
pope was shrewd enough to recognise that he could 
gain nothing in England except by force; and the 
position of affairs in Rome made it folly to venture on 
a quarrel with a ruler of William's quality. During 
the rest of the reign the Church in England was prac- 
tically independent of Rome and free from all inter- 
ference from abroad. Nor did the Church suffer much 
from its isolation. Only, since everything was made 
to depend on one man, there was no guarantee for the 
continuance of this better state of affairs. William, 
like many another strong-willed man, did not realise 
that he would not live for ever and that his passion 
for centralising all power in his own hands made it 
certain that confusion would break out after his death. 
There is a significant sentence in a letter from Lanfranc 
to Pope Alexander, before relations had broken off 
between the two courts : " I beseech you to pray God 
in His mercy that He grant a long life to my master 
the English king, for while he lives we have peace of 
some sort, but after his death we cannot hope to have 
peace or any other good." When the news of the 



86 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

Conqueror's death did reach Canterbury, it caused so 
severe a shock to the archbishop that many thought 
he would die of fear and anxiety. Lanfranc's grief 
may have arisen in part from his knowledge of the 
character of Rufus, but in part it sprang from his 
recognition that all good order in England depended 
on the will of one imperious man who was mortal and 
who had been unwilling to recognise that an institu- 
tion needs to outlive a man. 

William's policy in thus isolating the Church in 
England has been described as disastrous. But during 
the king's lifetime it had little effect of a hurtful 
kind. There was a higher tone of religious life in 
France than in England. The stronger currents of a 
larger life bringing with them both good and evil 
were flowing there. Had they been all checked at 
the Channel, Britain would have lost more than it had 
gained. But the archbishop within the definite limits 
which were set to his activity worked hard to in- 
fluence the religious life of his new country for good. 
To ignore other sides of his work, he bent his energies 
towards the reform of monasticism. William of 
Malmesbury relates that Lanfranc found the monks of 
Canterbury "not differing from seculars except that 
they showed themselves more reserved in chastity. 
For the rest they led a joyous life. One saw them go 
to the chase followed by hounds, lead horses, deliver 
themselves to amusement and good cheer. To judge 
by the number of their servants one had called them 
consuls rather than monks. At seeing these scandals 
Lanfranc for a time hid his grief. Not to terrify these 
lapsed monks by unsuitable severity he did not speak 
at first of reform. Only as opportunity arose he made 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND %7 

paternal remonstrances and afterwards retrenched 
several abuses little by little." That the accusation is 
not more bitter is the better guarantee of its truth. 
The monks of Canterbury and of England seem to have 
been not evil or irreligious men but honest souls who 
were not over rigorous in the observance of their 
rule. They fulfilled their functions and consumed their 
revenues. But it is not difficult to understand how they 
must have been an offence to men of an austerer ideal, 
and especially to a man who had once found the Bene- 
dictine rule too easy and had contemplated retirement to 
a hermit's cell. These were not the stuff out of which a 
reform movement could arise, these men who were at 
ease in Zion, and whose honest spirits were unvexed 
by any high vision. 

Since the archbishop found them the more difficult 
to reach with his new aims because every attempt at 
severer discipline was construed by them as a reproach 
on their past, he was driven to found new monasteries 
and to bring over monks from the Continent. Especi- 
ally did he make liberal drafts from his old monastery 
at Le Bee. A bull was obtained from Pope Alexander, 
according to which the Archbishop of Canterbury must 
be always chosen from among the monks. There were 
now in Canterbury two convents. One, that of St. 
Augustine, was entrusted to Scotland, a monk from 
Mont St. Michel. The other was that of St. Saviour's, 
in which Lanfranc himself was abbot. Dom. Henry, 
who had made his profession in Le Bee shortly after 
Anselm, was brought over and made prior. So many 
monks passed between the two, that St. Saviour's 
became practically a succursale of Le Bee. Dom. Paul 
was appointed abbot of St. Alban's. Gondulf, Anselm's 



88 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

closest friend, became bishop of Rochester, and there 
built a cathedral and a convent with sixty monks. 
Through the length and breadth of England the same 
slow movement went on. 

One weakness of Lanfranc's effort as of his mental 
attitude was that heavy love for uniformity which 
characterises all strongly centralised authority, and 
which has made the Roman type so often blind to the 
wholesome power which underlies freedom and indi- 
vidualism. His inclination and that of the Norman 
clergy generally was to despise the home effort and 
piety. Once, when Anselm was in England on busi- 
ness connected with the convent, the archbishop con- 
sulted his visitor on a matter which was causing him 
concern. The islanders persisted in offering rever- 
ence to various local saints whose names were not 
recognised by the Roman authorities. To one in 
particular his countrymen paid a peculiar veneration, 
honouring his memory as that of a martyr. This man 
Aelfeg had been Lanfranc's predecessor on the chair of 
Canterbury, but in the judgment of his successor had 
been martyred in no true sense of the word. The 
Danes had taken him captive in one of their forays 
and held him to ransom, with the threat of murder if 
the ransom were unpaid. Their captive knew that 
the only means of paying his ransom was to raise 
the money from his poor tenants whom the Danish 
invasions had already impoverished. Rather than tor- 
ment them he had gone to his death. Could such a 
deed be really called a martyrdom ? 

Anselm had no hesitation on the question. In words 
which have a curiously modern ring about them he 
declared his opinion that the man had died for the 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND 89 

right and to die for the right was to die for Christ. 
Christ had once called Himself the truth and would 
not disdain to accept the name of the right. Aelfeg's 
might not be a death for the name of Christ : it was 
better. It was a death for the reality of Christ. 
Besides, were Lanfranc to urge his objection to its 
logical end, he would need to strike off the list of 
martyrs John the Baptist, who died for purity and for 
truth, though Christ was never mentioned throughout 
his whole trial. What difference is there between a 
death for the right and a death for the truth ? The 
archbishop expressed himself convinced, conceived a 
special veneration for his predecessor, and even ordered 
Osbern, one of Anselm's pupils, to write the life of 
Aelfeg and to have a passionale composed to his 
memory. 

In connection with this visit to England there is a 
pretty sketch of the future archbishop's first appear- 
ance at Canterbury. His many friends had prepared 
for him the reputation of a saint and scholar. He was 
received with honour and asked to address the com- 
munity of monks at St. Saviour's. The abbot de- 
livered them a homily on how it is more blessed to 
give than to receive. The quaint little address reeks 
of the syllogism. Gravely and deliberately the speaker 
proved how those who have just given him a dinner 
have their generosity left after the dinner has dis- 
appeared. Though his gratitude remained when the 
table has been cleared, the kindness which produced 
both dinner and gratitude was the greater. But the 
convent gave him that day something more than a 
dinner. Among the monks was one who listened 
eagerly to every word which dropped from the abbot's 



90 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

lips and whose heart went out in utter devotion to the 
tender, strong man. Eadmer became Anselm's devoted 
admirer, to become in later years his confessor and 
hacidus senectutis suce (" the staff of his old age "), to 
become for all time his biographer. 

The visits across the Channel grew comparatively 
frequent, as the monks from Le Bee were scattered 
throughout England, and as the possessions of the 
convent increased there. And wherever the abbot 
went he won golden opinions. Men in England loved 
him, his geniality, his sympathy, his union of sweet- 
ness and light, his power of being sufficiently at leisure 
from his own thoughts to enter into theirs. Men's 
hearts among conquerors and conquered went out to 
one who was neither Aostan nor Norman nor Saxon, 
but a fellow-man among his fellow-men. Even the 
harsh Conqueror grew gentler in his presence. " When 
he sometimes came to the court of the king about 
various items of business in connection with the 
Church or with other matters, the king himself, laying 
aside the fierceness which made him seem cruel and 
terrible to many, became so kindly and affable that in 
his presence he appeared, to the surprise of many, to 
become a different man." 



CHAPTER Yl 

Election as Archbishop 

The last years during which Anselm remained abbot 
at Le Bee saw two commanding figures disappear from 
the European stage. 

In 1085 Gregory vii. passed to his rest at Salerno, 
murmuring as self -justification or confession, " I have 
loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in 
exile.". There is no such tremendous figure in all 
history. A monk of humble origin he had risen to 
occupy the chair of St. Peter, and had risen through 
no arts of compromise or of flattery but through the 
unflinching advocacy of a few principles. He had 
lived first to dominate and then to divide into oppos- 
ing camps all Europe, and he had done both by the 
appeal to an idea, the independence and spirituality 
of Christ's Church on earth. Alongside of Hildebrand, 
a man like Napoleon appears vulgar. It was to him 
an axiom that the Church was a divine institution, 
existing for specific ends and ruled by Christ's laws. 
Alike to manifest and to maintain its spiritual char- 
acter, it must be freed from the control of everything 
alien to its own genius. The methods by which he 
pursued this single aim of his life and the conclusions 
he drew from this ultimate principle cost Europe 

91 



92 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

appalling misery. No otherwise it may be than by 
such means could the heavy mass be leavened with 
higher thoughts. Canossa had revealed to astonished 
Europe the power of the Church when it appealed to 
an idea, but that power was too sudden to be enduring. 
And the exile into which the pope was driven, from 
which, himself a prisoner in the hands of his rescuers 
the Normans, he saw a nominee of the emperor seated 
on his chair at Rome, was the proof to all who cared 
to notice it that the struggle in which he had seemed 
victorious was only begun, and that many years would 
elapse before the opposing interests and ideals of 
emperor and pope could be brought to harmony. Into 
that struggle the abbot of Le Bee was soon to be 
drawn. 

1087 saw the death of the conqueror of England in 
the priory of St. Gervais near Rouen. Suspecting his 
illness to be mortal, he had sent for Anselm. The 
abbot had hurried North but had fallen ill on the 
road, and lay sick in the priory of Sotteville across 
the Seine. The cathedral bell ringing to prime roused 
William from sleep, and caused him to ask what 
the sound meant. When his attendants told him it 
came from the Church of St. Mary, he lifted up his 
hands and praying, " To my Lady the Holy Mother I 
commend myself, and may She by her holy prayers 
reconcile me to her dearest Son, our Lord Jesus 
Christ," died. 

What followed proved what he had been to his 
generation. Men told each other with awe that no 
sooner had the breath left the great king's body than 
his courtiers fled and left their master's body to be 
stripped by the scullions and deserted on the bare 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 93 

floor. No mere superstitious terror of the unhouseled 
corpse which death had surprised before the adminis- 
tration of the last rites of the Church drove men out 
in their pell-mell haste. They knew, and showed they 
knew, that the dam was down which had for many 
years kept back the forces of misrule in Normandy 
and England. Robert of Belesme, head of a great and 
unruly Norman house, was riding into Rouen to 
present himself at court. No sooner did the news of 
William's death reach him than he turned his horse's 
head. At Alengon and Belesme he made haste to 
expel the garrison of his dead lord, and to take joyous 
possession for himself. Men fled from the death- 
chamber to hold what was their own and to take if 
possible what belonged to their neighbour. The 
" Justicer " was dead ; and, as everything had de- 
pended on his single arm, chaos threatened to come 
again. There could hardly have been a more eloquent 
tribute to the only strength which had been able to 
tame the baronage. 

The body was brought for burial into the Minster 
of St. Stephen at Caen. The nobles were too busy 
with other tasks to attend, but the great ecclesiastics, 
abbots and bishops, were present. The Bishop of 
Evreux delivered an oration concerning the late king's 
life, and concluded it with an appeal to the assembled 
people to pray for the soul of the dead and forgive any 
wrong which he might have done them during his 
lifetime. " Then stood up Asceline son of Arthur, and 
with a loud voice in the hearing of them all put 
forward this complaint: 'The ground on which you 
stand was the site of my father's house which this 
man for whom you make request took by force from 



94 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

my father, and utterly refusing justice lie founded this 
church by his strong hand. Therefore I publicly claim 
this land, and in the name of God I forbid that the 
body of the spoiler be covered with earth which is 
mine, and be buried in my heritage.'" After due 
investigation had proved the justice of the man's claim 
they bought the ground in which the king was to be 
laid. It was their fitting tribute to the memory of 
him whose body they had assembled to lay in the 
earth. When not blinded by passion or misled by 
State considerations he had been capable of doing the 
same. With many notable exceptions, with frequent 
relapse into the lawless Norman temper, he had yet 
recognised that there is an order in this world higher 
than the will of the strongest. He too in his own 
way had loved justice and hated iniquity. 

On his deathbed William had bequeathed the 
dukedom of Normandy to his eldest son Robert, and 
expressed the wish that William, his second son, should 
succeed him as King of England. And William ii., 
knowing his England, had wasted no time in crossing 
the Channel to take possession. To Lanfranc, who 
crowned the new king at Westminster, he made 
solemn promise of his purpose to rule according to 
just and righteous laws. The nobles did not leave him 
long in doubt that he would have to fight for his crown, 
and were not long left in doubt as to his ability to 
defend it. Many of them held lands on both sides of 
the Channel, and foresaw the difficulty of an allegiance 
which would now be due to two masters. Many would 
have preferred the capricious Robert of Normandy to 
his cunning and vigorous brother. Odo, the bishop of 
Bayeux, whom the Conqueror in his last illness had 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 95 

been persuaded against his better judgment to free 
from the prison into which he had found it necessary 
to cast his turbulent brother, gathered a strong force 
and flung himself on England. But Ruf us had the Eng- 
lish people of Kent and the South, had also through his 
father's policy and his own treatment of Lanfranc the 
English Church behind him. By their help he struck 
down the conspiracy for a time. But it was only for 
a time. To the end he could never be sure of the 
barons. They disturbed his reign by risings in the 
North, and weakened his power by continual disloyalty. 
It proves the shrewd statecraft, the indomitable will, 
the unflinching courage of the man, that, though he so 
soon quarrelled with the Church, he was able to main- 
tain the unity of the kingdom against them. There 
are many things to be laid to the charge of Rufus. 
But, when the worst has been said against his private 
character, his ecclesiastical policy, and his ravenous 
ambition, one thing must be set in his favour that 
the English people throughout his reign held fast to 
him against the Norman nobles. Though he oppressed 
them, his single oppression was not so dreadful as the 
possibility of falling into an anarchy like that which 
under the weak Robert soon afflicted Normandy. One 
shearer was better than a dozen such. And England 
was kept as England by his strong and brutal hands. 

It was not long before the king's character began to 
reveal itself in his public acts. He was a man of 
coarse appetites, endowed with a hard clear intelli- 
gence, possessed by strong ambition, and alike ruthless 
and resolute in carrying out his schemes. His father's 
faithfulness to his wife is a tender trait in a grim 
character ; and it had been real enough to refine the 



96 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

tone of his court. The son recoiled into the grossest 
debauchery. Unmarried, he lived after a fashion which 
startled an age that was not easily startled. But his 
debaucheries covered in him as in many another a 
calculated selfishness which through all sensual indul- 
gence never for a moment lost sight of the attainment 
of its other and ultimate ends. Of religion in any real 
sense of the word the man seems to have been desti- 
tute. That there was some power higher than his own 
desires, which was capable of thwarting his wishes, 
he did not question. Therefore he hated it. When he 
submitted, he only submitted because he must and so 
long as it was not safe to resist. When he judged it 
safe to resist, he did so without compunction and with- 
out remorse. His repentance was terror, which existed 
so long as he was in mortal fear but not for an hour 
longer. Freeman has well said that Rufus was what 
this age never sees, a blasphemer. To-day, if a man 
wishes to live according to the desires of his own 
heart, he either ignores all thought of the Almighty or 
questions His existence. Rufus could not find and did 
not desire that easy way of escape. He really believed 
alike in God's existence and in His power. And when 
he found God in his way, he cursed Him in his heart. 
To such a man the Church was an institution with the 
fundamental ideas of which he was at hopeless variance. 
It represented all that he most hated, it appealed to 
that with which he had no sympathy. It was useful 
and could be made more useful in many ways. It 
could provide him with the instruments he needed, 
men who had the best knowledge of finance and 
administration which the time afforded, money which 
his ambition and his pleasures continually required. 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 97 

But as a means to discipline men's souls into obedience 
to the law of the living God he could only find it 
incessantly in his way. 

There had sprung up in that period a type of 
Churchman of a peculiarly obnoxious description. 
In an age when almost all knowledge of finance, 
administration, and law was in the hands of men who 
had received a clerical training, and when the education 
necessary for such work could only be obtained through 
the Church, a number of men turned to that training 
as a means of securing secular preferment. They were 
often destitute of any higher insight into religion or of 
any interest in it for itself, but only in the monastic 
and episcopal schools could they obtain the knowledge 
which they desired for other ends. They accepted the 
outward forms of the Church in order to secure the 
power which its training was fit to give them. Thus 
they often added to their original vices the uglier one 
of hypocrisy and helped to dishonour the religion the 
outward symbols of which they bore. The Conqueror's 
centralised system of government which made a court 
chaplaincy the surest stepping-stone to ecclesiastical or 
civil promotion had attracted many such men. 

From among these Rufus found the fitting instrument 
for his purposes in a certain Ranulf. He is said to have 
been the base-born son of a priest at Bayeux, but the 
strict party whose aim was to establish the celibacy 
of the clergy were branding as unchaste the innocent 
wives of many priests. Handsome, unscrupulous, 
clever, with the narrow astuteness of a self-seeking 
man, adroit to accommodate himself to the humours of 
those he served, this man rose from the position of a 
page to be Rufus' vizier. Someone about the court 
7 



98 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

nicknamed him Flambard, the firebrand, and the 
name was found so adequate that it clung. The king's 
passions and ambitions required money. Ranulf could 
help him to gain it. He is accused of having falsified 
measurements in the Domesday returns so as to 
increase the ratable area ; but the experience of 
valuators in every generation makes one hesitate be- 
fore accepting too readily the complaint of men whose 
valuation has been raised. Certain it is that he used 
every means to extort money from England. Henry 
of Huntingdon is very emphatic : " AVith tributes and 
exactions he not merely shaved, he flayed the English 
people." Following the line of least resistance, he 
turned naturally and inevitably to the spoliation of 
the Church. Lanfranc was dead, and his death left 
the Church in England without a head. Not only did 
the rankest simony flourish in that every man who 
was appointed to ecclesiastical office must pay for 
the dignity received, but the king abused an old priv- 
ilege. The sovereign was advocates of all bishop- 
rics and abbacies. During the vacancy of any one of 
these he had the right to intromit with its revenues, 
but could only employ the revenues for Church pur- 
poses. Rufus simply appropriated the larger part of 
the income to the royal fisc. It became therefore to his 
interest to continue the vacancy when any bishopric 
fell vacant, and his father's policy which had made 
all ecclesiastical preferment depend on the royal will 
gave him the power so to do. After Lanfranc died, 
the archbishopric was unoccupied for almost four 
years. The king appointed officers of his own to the 
management of vacant see or abbacy, assigned a certain 
proportion of the revenues to the maintenance of the 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 99 

clergy or monks, and rackrented the domains for his 
own benefit. The most immediate but not the worst 
result was a scandalous oppression of the Church 
tenants. Since the Crown did not hold the lands in 
perpetuity, its officers took little care of anything 
except the extortion of the largest possible sum during 
their occupation. But the worse and more abiding 
mischief was the destruction of discipline in the 
Church itself. The rising tide of religious life in 
England was checked. 

All England groaned under the oppression. And 
what made the position of affairs more galling and 
more hopeless was that an appeal to the royal justice 
against the exactions of the exchequer became an idle 
formality. For Ranulf held the double office ; he was, 
to use the phraseology of our own day, at once the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney-General. 
To appeal from the exchequer to the justice-court was 
to appeal from the firebrand to the fire. The laity 
must watch the gifts and lands which their fathers had 
left for the weal of their souls employed to maintain 
the royal pleasures or to subserve the royal ambition. 
To an age which was firmly convinced of the reality of 
Purgatory and the efficacy of masses to alleviate its 
pains that must have appeared a grievous wrong to 
the dead. But the mischief went deeper than Eadmer's 
vivid description of the conduct of the royal commis- 
sioners shows. Discipline within the Church was 
broken down. When several abbeys were headless, 
their revenues appropriated save for gifts doled out in 
niggardly fashion to the monks, no monastery could 
remain unhurt. When a bishopric remained vacant for 
years, the diocese fell into disorder. And when every 

LofC. 



loo ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

abbey or see was filled only by a man who consented to 
pay for preferment, the tone of the whole Church was 
lowered directly and indirectly. Several years of such 
rule would have sufficed to undo most of the efforts 
Lanf ranc had made to introduce a higher ideal of cleri- 
cal life and Church government into England. In the 
last year of the vacancy at Canterbury men in England 
were restless in temper ; and many who had known 
Lanfranc had begun to say that there was no hope of 
a better state of affairs till Lanfranc's successor at Le 
Bee became his successor at Canterbury as well. 

In 1092 Hugh the Wolf, Earl of Chester, fell ill. 
The by-name expressed a good deal of the character of 
the man. A stout man of his hands, loving war and 
wassail, cruel and easily angered, he had followed 
William from Avranches to the conquest of England. 
The Conqueror having proved his fidelity and gauged 
his capacity had set him on the western borders to 
keep the wild Welsh in check. Hugh knew his 
business and wrought his work in such rough wise 
as was revealed to him. He fought well and lived 
hard. But somewhere in his heart was a sense of 
unseen things which made the Church of Christ a 
reality to him, and with it went the rough respect of 
a man for vigour and sincerity, which made his admira- 
tion go out toward the men within the Church who 
were doing things. Capable only of controlling other 
men, he could yet understand the higher dignity of 
men who could control themselves. At Avranches the 
rough soldier had learned to respect the abbot of Le 
Bee and to admire the work of the Benedictines. 
Already in Chester, when he had wished to give some 
aid to religion, he had resolved to transform a house 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP loi 

of secular canons in the church of St. Werburg into a 
community of monks. In pursuance of his scheme, he 
had invited Anselm to England, that the house might 
be reformed under his friend's direction and affiliated to 
the Norman abbey. Anselm refused to go. He could 
not pretend to be ignorant that men in England were 
thinking of him as worthy to fill the chair of Lanfranc. 
And while the matter was not before him in such 
fashion that he could either accept or refuse to under- 
take the duty, he was unwilling to expose himself to 
misunderstanding, as though he sought a dignity which 
he did not desire. 

When he fell ill, however, Hugh longed for Anselm the 
more. In the day of his mortal need the man to whom 
religion was the supreme reality of life appeared to be 
the only man who could hear his confession and give 
his soul courage. When the abbot again refused to 
come, the earl sent a second and more urgent appeal. 
" Tell him that, if he comes not now, all the joys of his 
future bliss will not be able to make him forget that he 
once shirked his duty." The Wolf knew his man and 
knew how to lodge his appeal. Anselm still hesitated. 
But it was uncertain that the archbishopric would 
be offered him. What was certain was that a dying 
sinner needed him and craved for his presence. He 
resolved to fulfil the manifest duty, let the issue be 
what it might. 

He had scarcely landed in England, when a message 
from his monks overtook him. Scarcity had again 
visited the convent, and there had been no Lanfranc to 
relieve their necessity. Probably the policy of Rufus 
in connection with ecclesiastical affairs had made the 
revenues from their property in the island kingdom 



102 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

come ill more slackly. They charged their abbot on 
his obedience not to return until he had put in order 
the business of the convent across the Channel. With 
his double commission Anselm reached Canterbury, 
where he had intended to celebrate the festival of the 
birth of the Virgin. There men hailed him as their 
future archbishop ; and he fled. On his v^ay northward 
he visited the court at Westminster. Rufus showed 
him high honour, left his seat and came down to re- 
ceive him, brought him in and set him at his right 
hand on the seat which Lanf ranc had usually occupied. 
The abbot asked for a private interview. No sooner 
were the two left alone together than he spoke to the 
Red King about his scandalous life. Gravely he set 
before him the evil suspicions which were current 
about his private morals and urged upon him the duty 
of repentance and reformation. The incident is signi- 
ficant. To the monk the realities of death and judg- 
ment had so revealed themselves that his first business 
was to recall a sinner from his evil way. But the 
worldly wise among the monks at Le Bee doubtless 
shook their heads, if the story ever reached the con- 
vent. They had cause to question whether their busi- 
ness was in the right hands, if they heard that their 
abbot had used the opportunity of a private interview 
not to make interest at court for his convent but to 
attempt the conversion of the King of England. 

Arrived at Chester, Anselm found the earl recovered 
from his sickness. The convent business detained its 
head in England for nearly five months, but when that 
was finished and the abbot applied for permission to 
return to Normandy, the king refused to let him go. 
It is too much out of keeping with all that is otherwise 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 103 

known of William's character to believe that the inter- 
view at Westminster had made him desire to detain 
the abbot in England or that he had any wish immedi- 
ately to fill Lanfranc's vacant chair. The more likely 
cause was a political one. Henry, the Conqueror's 
youngest son, had lately secured a footing in Normandy. 
A new count had succeeded in Flanders. Robert of 
Normandy was already showing his incompetence for 
any sustained eflTort in government. William had to 
face the possibility of European complications, which, 
as he always hoped to win something in Normandy, 
might give an opportunity to his ambition. But the 
king knew the restlessness of nobles and people which 
his treatment of the Church and especially the long 
vacancj^ in Canterbury had caused ; he knew also 
the common desire to see Anselm appointed to the 
archbishopric. He probably detained the abbot as a 
useful pawn in his game. What makes this supposition 
the more likely is the king's consent to one of the 
strangest contradictions which even the Middle Ages 
can show. At the Christmas court of this year in 
Gloucester the bishops, abbots, and nobles of the realm 
desired their king to allow prayers to be offered 
in every church in England that God would put 
it into their lord's heart to give an archbishop to 
Canterbury and to his kingdom. At first hearing of 
the request Rufus was very angry, but he soon con- 
soled himself by the consideration that, let the Church 
pray as it liked, the final decision in the matter rested 
with himself. And he grimly suffered Anselm to pre- 
pare a form of prayer for the purpose, to which he 
probably listened during the festival season. It was 
all part of the game. If this would help to keep men 



104 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

quiet, they might have their order of prayer as they 
desired. Their contentment enabled him to dip his 
hands more deeply and more easily into the revenues 
of the Church. The king's attitude of vulgar cynicism 
and his incapacity to appreciate the character of 
Anselm are equally marked in the reply he gave to one 
of his courtiers. The baron spoke highly of the abbot 
of Le Bee, as of one who had left all for Christ's sake 
and who in all his conduct sought for nothing less than 
the things of God. " Has he," sneered Rufus, " no eye 
for Canterbury ? " " No," stoutly asserted the baron, 
" for that least of all." " Why," was the reply, " if he 
but imagined that he could get it, he would come leap- 
ing and clapping his hands at the chance. But, by the 
holy face of Lucca, no one shall be archbishop but my- 
self." The character of Rufus, so far as his public acts 
reveal it, is one which gives subject for strange and 
dijfficult thoughts. He seems to have been almost 
destitute of the faculty to which spiritual things appeal. 
Nothing except material considerations appeared able 
to reach or influence him. 

These now visited the king. In 1093 he fell 
dangerously ill at Gloucester. With his illness came 
such thought of religion as men of his stamp are 
capable of grasping. He was visited by mortal fear of 
death and judgment, and grew anxious to buy himself 
off from the God whose wrath he believed to rest upon 
him. Anselm who was near Gloucester at the time 
was consulted concerning the sinner's case. " Let him 
begin to the Lord with confession," was the abbot's 
advice. Thereupon Rufus emptied his conscience. He 
vowed reform in all his government. He promised to 
remit all charges due to the royal treasury, to open his 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 105 

prisons and let the men he had oppressed go free, to 
let fall every summons lodged in the courts against his 
subjects. It witnesses to a strange state of English 
justice, when these were regarded as of themselves 
matters which required the king's repentance, and when 
his first duty towards his God was to order all his pro- 
cesses of law to be dropped. The descriptions which 
Eadmer and others give of the oppression sound tame 
before that witness. The king had all these pledges 
written out and sealed with the royal seal. He pro- 
mised a new rule of mansuetude and justice. And as 
guarantee of his sincerity his rod of oflBce was carried 
to the church and laid on the altar. 

But men asked one further pledge of their king's 
sincerity. Let him name an archbishop for Canter- 
bury. The appointment would be at once a public guar- 
antee of his repentance and a check upon him, should he 
desire to resile from it. There is something beautiful 
in it. The archbishop was to those men still their 
father in God ; he stood for all that men desired to see 
in England, an order which was not based on one man's 
will but on the purpose of the Eternal. Rufus at last 
named Anselm. The bishops went in search of the 
new prelate that he might at once receive the staff of 
office from the dying king. To their dismay Anselm 
refused. It was no question of investiture or canonical 
election which troubled him. He knew something of 
his own power, but knew better than most men do 
something of his own weakness. And the charge of a 
great see, especially in the then conditions of English 
religious life and under such a king as Rufus had 
already proved himself, might well make a man of 
his character hesitate. The bishops urged him to have 



io6 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

mercy on them and on England, lest his refusal should 
harm the cause of religion. " I know, but I am old and 
unfit for work. How can I bear the charge of all this 
Church ? I am a monk, and have shunned all worldly 
business. Do not entangle me in that which I have 
never loved and for which I am wholly unfit." The 
bishops refused to listen. They promised to bear the 
secular affairs for him — only let him become their head. 
Finally they dragged him to the king's bedside. Rufus 
from his sickbed added his entreaties. Let Anselm 
remember the king's father and mother and their zeal 
for Holy Church. Let him consider the estate of 
the king's own soul, and show interest in his repent- 
ance by helping to make his reformation more sure. 
But Anselm had ever great powers of resistance : he 
still refused. The bishops fell on their knees before 
him, he dropped to a like attitude and prayed to be 
spared. At last they lost all patience. Archbishop he 
must and should become, if not willingly then on com- 
pulsion. A pastoral staff was brought and put into 
Rufus' hand. But Anselm held his own rigidly closed 
and refused to accept it. The men who surrounded 
him strove to force his hand open. Some said they 
succeeded in opening the index finger and closing it 
round the staff. Others said the staff was held against 
a closed fist. The men were in no mood to consider 
trifles of that description, they were in that state of 
nervous excitement when all sense of the decorous 
disappears from their minds. This is naught which 
you do, protested the struggling archbishop-elect. It 
made no matter. They half carried, half dragged him 
from the sick-chamber, brought him to the neighbour- 
ing church, and sang a hasty Te Deum over his election. 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 107 

Anselm had good cause to write to his monks at Le 
Bee, " Those could not doubt my unwillingness, who on 
that day saw my face, as bishops, abbots, and other 
dignitaries dragged me protesting and struggling into 
the church, so that it seemed doubtful whether mad- 
men dragged a sane man, or sane men a lunatic, save 
that they were singing, while I more like a dead man 
than a living grew pale with surprise and grief." 

In the whole matter Anselm did not permit himself 
to be blinded by any illusions. The bishops, in the 
excitement of obtaining their desired object and in 
the hopes kindled by William's promises, cherished the 
expectation that everything would now go well. Not 
so their new primate : he was man of the world enough 
to know that a sickbed repentance is rather an insecure 
foundation, especially when the sick man is a Rufus. 
Brought back to the royal bedside he said to the king, 
" Know that you are not going to die of this illness. 
And be it also known to you this day that all you have 
done is nothing and can at any hour be undone." After 
the first excitement had grown quiet, he put his view 
of the situation before the bishops in a parable : " Know 
you what you have done this day ? You have yoked 
together in one plough a powerful steer and a feeble 
ewe. The plough is England's government, and the 
two who drag it are the king who rules over the 
temporal, the archbishop who governs the spiritual 
concerns. When both are strong, the plough drives on 
steadily. But you have harnessed me alongside of 
Rufus, and the untamed indomitable steer will break 
loose again and drag, not the plough only, but his fellow 
in the yoke through briars and across the wilderness. 
You will gain no profit from this or from me." 



io8 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

And in truth they form a strong contrast, the 
Norman full of the pride of life and almost untouched 
by thought of the things which though unseen are 
eternal, the Goth to whom this life was but a pre- 
paration for that which was to come and who could 
only grow interested in any aim so far as it represented 
an eternal truth. It was hopeless from the beginning 
that they should ever understand each other, more 
hopeless that the}^ should long succeed in working to- 
gether. A more adroit man, a second Lanfranc might 
have managed the Red King. But Anselm was little 
able to see any common ground between two opposing 
principles : he was equally incapable of betraying one 
which he held. When once his stand was taken, the 
consequences which arose as a result disturbed him very 
little. He could only remain in the position to which 
he was committed, vexed and astonished because his 
opponents failed to appreciate his attitude. The very 
passionlessness of his adherence to conviction helped to 
deceive men like Rufus who fail to understand that 
a man who does not bluster and never dreams of 
intriguing can yet be in deadly earnest over any 
question. Having almost no personal rancour, cherish- 
ing no small jealousies, the primate was ever ready to 
be reconciled to an opponent : not understanding his 
opponent's attitude, he was helpless to bring about the 
reconciliation he passionately desired. He could not 
form a party. The party might form itself round 
him or round the convictions which he represented. 
Decidedly no weak ewe this, for beneath the meek 
exterior there lay hid a more tireless and indomitable 
resolution than under the bluster of the king. 

The election and the delivery of the pastoral staff 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 109 

from the king's hand were alike irregular. Of formal 
choice by a duly-constituted ecclesiastical court there 
is no mention. Practically Anselm was chosen by 
acclamation in a body which could regard itself as 
uttering the voice of England. The court gathered 
beside the king's bed was Norman England ; its voice 
was the voice of Norman England. When the king 
nominated the new archbishop, he became the mouth- 
piece of their selection. Even if there had existed a 
court which was competent to nominate a successor to 
Lanfranc, it could not have met without the king's 
consent, and Rufus refused to allow freedom to these 
courts. As little could the delivery of the pastoral 
staff by the king be called regular, when the deed is 
judged by the standards of a later age. It is possible 
to insist that Anselm by opposing a closely clenched 
fist to the staff declined to receive it from the royal 
hand. But that the staff came from Rufus was not 
the ground of his refusal. He declined it from any 
hand. His unfitness for the duties which the office 
imposed, the peculiar difiiculty of fulfilling its duties 
under a king like Rufus, his unwillingness to leave a 
cloistered life were the reasons which according to his 
own express declarations prompted the refusal. Had 
the other question presented any difficult}?-, he was not 
the man to have been silent about it. Despite the pro- 
tests of Pere Ragey and Mr. M. Rule it remains clear 
that " we do not find Anselm expressing the slightest 
scruple as to receiving the archbishopric by the gift 
of the king only without reference to the elective 
rights of any ecclesiastical body." It may make the 
archbishop a neater lay -figure wearing the label " in- 
vestiture question " to think of him as provided with 



no ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

a series of ready-made decisions on the problems of 
Church government and as then proceeding to put 
them into practice. But it is more in agreement with 
the facts of the case to recognise that he became a 
strong supporter of the new canons of Church law 
because he found that not otherwise could he attain 
the ends which he saw to be essential to the prosperity 
of the Church in England. Nothing which the arch- 
bishop wrote at this time (and he wrote much especially 
to his monks at Le Bee) betrays the slightest hint that 
the question of the method of election had then occurred 
to him. The reason was simple : his mind was wholly 
occupied with the prior question as to whether he could 
accept the office on any terms. 

And that was the question which vexed the leading 
minds of England for some weeks. The new prelate 
raised difficulty after difficulty. He was unfitted by 
nature and training for the management of secular 
affairs : his bishops promised to relieve him of these. 
He urged his vow of obedience as abbot in Le Bee . 
they undertook to convince his monks. He fell back 
on his allegiance to his archbishop in France and to 
Robert of Normandy: they would persuade both to 
free him. And then they opened the whole battery of 
duty. He knew the state of religion in England and 
how much depended on whether the see of Canterbury 
were worthily filled. Dare he sufier it to fall back into 
the king's hands? If he judged himself incapable of 
the task, had he any right to set his private judg- 
ment against the judgment of all England which 
had solemnly asked him to undertake it? After 
many struggles Anselm consented, and the letters 
were written to Normandy to announce his decision 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP iii 

and to request his superiors to set him free from his 
duties there. 

But the man now found himself in a difficult position. 
His decision was sure to expose him to misunder- 
standing, and much of it was the direct result of his 
past action. He had spoken strongly — perhaps the 
new circumstances brought the suspicion that he had 
spoken too strongly — about the necessity of a cloistered 
life. Many had been persuaded through writings or 
words of his to flee the dangers of life in the world and 
to seek refuge at Le Bee. When he the head of the 
convent elected to return to the world's turmoil, there 
was no one but himself to blame, if some of the monks 
who had sought the monastery at his persuasion turned 
his own words against him. The first letter to Le Bee 
breathes that feeling throughout, and the frequency 
with which he returns to the point betrays the con- 
sciousness that the reproach is not unjustifiable. And 
he could do nothing except fall back on his own clear 
sense of right and appeal to their knowledge of the 
general course of his life before this time. "I hear 
that there are some (but who they are God knoweth) 
who in malice feign, or through error suspect, or by in- 
temperate grief are driven to declare that I am rather 
attracted to the archbishopric by evil greed than 
compelled by religious conviction. And how can I 
persuade these of my good conscience in this matter, if 
my life and conversation satisfy them not ? For I have 
so lived in the monastic habit during thirty-three years 
(three years without office, fifteen years as prior, fifteen 
as abbot) that all good men who knew me loved me, not 
that my zeal brought this about but the grace of God : 
nor did any man see in me any deed on which he could 



112 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

base the conclusion that I delighted in advancement. 
What then shall I do ? How shall I repel this false 
and hateful suspicion, that it may not by diminishing 
their love hurt the souls of those who for God's sake 
loved me, or by persuading them that I am worse than 
I am (hurt the souls) of those who are misled by evil 
example or admonition, or even by setting before them 
a bad example the souls of those others who knew 
me not and may hear of this." And he went on to call 
God to witness that only duty had compelled this step, 
and to pray God to correct him if the step proved to 
have been a wrong one. 

While the letters were being sent to their destina- 
tion in Normandy, the king recovered from his sick- 
ness. His repentance endured no longer than the 
sickness. When his health was restored, he became 
ashamed of his remorse and sought to wipe out the 
memory of it by new severities. Orders were issued 
that all prisoners who had not yet been released should 
be more closely confined than before, and that as 
many as possible of the released should be recovered 
and shut up again. The suits against his subjects 
which had been dropped were continued with greater 
rigour. The short breathing-space of hope made the 
later condition seem but the more intolerable, so that 
the monkish historian wrote that " such misery arose 
in the realm that all men who remember it remember 
it as unique in England." When the Bishop of 
Rochester ventured to remonstrate, the king replied 
with a scoff, "You may as well understand that by 
the holy face at Lucca God will never make me good 
as a result of the evil He has done me." 

When the letters which set the abbot free to under- 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 113 

take his new duties arrived from Normandy, Anselm 
sought the king at Rochester. There he laid before 
William the three conditions on which he was pre- 
pared to accept the archbishopric. The king must 
restore to Canterbury without process of law all the 
lands which had belonged to the see during Lanfranc's 
tenancy, and must consent to have the question of 
the lands which even Lanfranc had not been able to 
secure brought before the courts for decision. He 
must further understand that in the division between 
pope and antipope Anselm with all Normandy had 
already acknowledged Urban 11. to be the legitimate 
successor of St. Peter, and that from this allegiance he 
did not mean to resile. And finally the king must 
promise due respect to the archbishop's counsel, even 
as the archbishop owned the king to be his liege lord. 
There was a party at that time in the kingdom which 
combined with strong convictions as to the independ- 
ence of the Church in England high views on the royal 
prerogative. Their work has largely passed into 
oblivion because their effort failed, but enough remains 
to prove that they were by no means contemptible 
in ability. Had Rufus been less of a pagan, had he 
not made the royal prerogative a mere means of ex- 
tortion in ecclesiastical affairs, he might have been 
able to maintain his father's position to the Church 
in England. At this time he was guided by the advice 
of this party. He laid Anselm's proposals before 
William, bishop of Durham, and Robert, Count of 
Meulan, and by their counsel replied that everything 
which Canterbury had possessed in the days of Lan- 
franc would be handed over to the new archbishop, 
but that about the other property of the see he declined 
8 



114 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

to give any pledge. As to the question between the 
rival popes, since Anselm had asked for no understand- 
ing, William proffered him no promise. In a short 
time, however, the letters from Le Bee and the 
Norman court reached the king also, and he seems to 
have thought that Anselm was now completely in 
his power. No longer abbot in Normandy, not yet 
archbishop in England, the man was in the king's 
hands. Acting perhaps on the advice of Flambard, 
William decided that he had promised too much, and 
at Windsor requested as a personal favour that those 
parts of Lanfranc's lands which had been granted out 
on military tenure should be continued to the men 
who held them. To this Anselm refused to consent. 
To grant away any part of the property of the see 
even before he was consecrated was practically to make 
himself guilty of simony. 

Matters seemed to have reached a deadlock. Already 
Anselm began to hope that he might escape from the 
whole charge and without any neglect of duty might 
be free to become a simple monk again. But the 
position irked the nobles. Their religious sense was 
hurt by seeing the primacy of England used cynically 
and publicly as a means of huckstering for money. 
And even men who had little sense of religion had reason 
to dread this bold stretch of the royal prerogative and 
to fear that the king would not limit himself to such 
treatment of religious property but extend his claims 
to secular also. The moment was propitious for their 
voice being heard, since the king was contemplating a 
descent on Normandy and could not afford to alienate 
their support. Rufus yielded. At Winchester on 
April 17 Anselm put his hands within those of the 



ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP 115 

king, and " became his man." Thereupon he was duly 
seized of all the temporal possessions of the see of 
Canterbury even as Lanfranc had held them. At 
Canterbury on September 25 he was enthroned ; and 
finally at Canterbury on December 4 1093 the Arch- 
bishop of York with nine assisting bishops conse- 
crated him to the primacy over all England. It was 
the custom of the age to practise a species of sortes 
Bibliance on the occasion of the consecration of a 
priest. A book of the Gospels was opened over the 
shoulders of the kneeling priest. The passage at 
which the book fell open was held to possess some 
prophetic significance. Men whispered to one another 
that the passage which was read over the bowed head 
of their new archbishop was that which relates how 
a certain man made a great feast and bade many, but 
they all with one consent began to make excuse. 



CHAPTER VII 

Rockingham 

A CUSTOM had existed from early times in England, 
according to which a bishop on receiving his appoint- 
ment paid heriot to the king like any other who had 
succeeded to a fief. And, although since the middle 
of the tenth century this had ceased to be compulsory 
because in that form it savoured too much of simony, 
it still continued in the form of a voluntary gift. 
Accordingly, when Anselm appeared at Yuletide in 
the king's court, he brought with him a present of 500 
pounds of silver. Rufus, who was busy fitting out an 
expedition against his brother in Normandy, was even 
more in need of money than usual. The gift was 
welcome, but some of the courtiers whispered that it 
was insufficient. Canterbury was wealthy, and the 
archbishop who owed his promotion to the royal 
bounty ought to acknowledge his debt more worthily. 
Anselm was informed that nothing less than 1000 
pounds would satisfy the king. He refused to give it. 
The lands and property of the see had been so robbed 
by the officers of the exchequer during the vacancy 
that only after three years had elapsed was its new 
occupant able to live without forestalling his annual 
revenues. The money could only have been procured 

116 



ROCKINGHAM it; 

by oppression of the tenants. Besides, the archbishop's 
whole instincts revolted against the idea of buying 
his liege lord's confidence as one buys an ass. " Do 
not, my lord," he urged, " refuse to accept what I now 
offer. For though it is his first, it will not be your arch- 
bishop's last gift. And I judge it to be more useful 
and more honourable to thee to accept from me a little 
with loving goodwill and often rather than by violent 
exaction to extort much at one time and against my 
will. With goodwill thou canst have me and all mine 
at thy service, but compulsorily thou shalt have 
neither me nor mine." Rufus brusquely retorted, 
"Let thine own remain thine with a curse to it, 
mine own will suffice for me; and begone." There 
remained nothing for the archbishop to do except 
to comfort himself with the reflection that the re- 
fusal had freed him from even the appearance of 
having bought his see, and to distribute the silver 
among the poor as alms "for the good of the king's 
soul." 

In February 1094 Rufus gathered at Hastings an 
army for the invasion of Normandy, and thither 
the bishops of England also gathered to bless his 
departure and pray for his success. Since adverse 
winds detained the expedition for a month, the oppor- 
tunity was employed to consecrate one of the king's 
chaplains, Robert of Blouet, to the see of Lincoln. 
The archbishop sought to make a further use of the 
opportunity. It was near the beginning of Lent. The 
camp was swarming with young gallants whose 
flowing hair and efleminate style of dress gave 
colour to the suspicion that they were addicted to 
certain vices. The archbishop delivered a vigorous 



ii8 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

Ash Wednesday homily and persuaded many to aban- 
don at least their long hair. But his spirit was 
ill at ease. To him had been committed the care of 
the moral and spiritual estate of the realm. He be- 
lieved that, unless something were done, the kingdom 
threatened to sink into practical heathenism cloaked by 
the Christian name, yet without the royal support he 
could do very little. A more practical man would 
have recogTiised that the eve of a warlike expedition 
was not the time to press Church reform on the atten- 
tion of Rufus, but Anselm was resolute to make the 
attempt. Admitted to the royal presence, he went 
straight to the root of the matter. There was no 
discipline in English religion, there was no means 
by which the archbishop could make his influence 
felt on the whole land or by which the Church could 
utter its voice. If only king and archbishop united 
their forces, they were able to effect something for 
the support of tottering Christianity within their 
England. What, Rufus asked, did the archbishop 
desire ? Let the king appoint men to the vacant 
abbacies, so that the monks mitjht no longrer be at 
liberty to transgress all rule and live as they listed 
in their monasteries. And let the Church be free to 
exercise its ancient right of holding synods. During 
the king's lifetime none had met in England. If the 
king suff'ered one to meet now, and if the canons it 
enacted were supported by the king's authority, some- 
thing could then be effected to prevent the land from 
becoming a very Sodom. "And what will all this 
do for you ? " sneered Rufus. " For me nothing in all 
likelihood, but much for God's honour and for yours." 
The king blustered that the abbeys were his property, 



ROCKINGHAM 119 

and that he meant to maintain his hold on them as 
tightly as the archbishop maintained his hold on the 
lands of his see. " To you they belong," was the 
answer, "but to you as their guardian, not as their 
owner; they are yours to employ for God's end not 
for your own ends, to rear men for God's service and 
not warriors for your battles." The place where the 
archbishop uttered the words might have proved to 
him how ill-timed they were. Rufus was in instant 
need of troops and money to pay them, and was 
least likely then to surrender an easy source of 
revenue. 

Anselm was unwilling to give up the effort to recon- 
cile himself with the king. Except they twain could 
plough a straight furrow, there could be no harvest in 
England to the good of the Church of Christ. At his 
request the bishops went back to the court to ask why 
he did not have his lord's grace. " I see no special 
reason why it should be given," was the dubious answer 
to their petition. The primate was unable or unwilling 
to construe it, but his bishops helped him out. " Give 
him money, and he will then see the special reason. 
Give him much money. We have all required to 
do it, and you need not expect that you alone can 
escape." But this Anselm utterly refused to do. 
Apart from all other considerations, if he were to yield 
now, what guarantee had he against further and larger 
demands? At least, the others urged, he could give 
the original 500 pounds which he had previously offered. 
No, he refused to give even that. He would not consent 
to offer a gift which had been already rejected. And 
if he had been willing to give the sum, he could 
no longer do so, for the money was already in the 



120 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

hands of the poor to whom he had caused it to be dis- 
tributed. " Tell him," was William's reply, when this 
answer was reported to him, " that I hated him yester- 
day, and I hate him more thoroughly to-day. Let him 
be sure my hate will grow with the following days. I 
will never again count him father and archbishop. 
I hate and refuse alike his blessing and his prayers. 
Let him beofone whither he will." There was nothing: 
more to be hoped. Anselm could but leave the camp 
and retire to Canterbury, while William unfurthered 
by his archbishop's prayers crossed into Normandy. 
And there, Eadmer adds, meaning no doubt that it was 
the inevitable result of the want of those prayers, he 
gat for himself no profit proportioned to the money he 
spent, but came home baffled. The money spent in 
Normandy was not however wasted, for Eufus could 
bide his time. 

The incident is significant, and rightly seen it shows 
what the struggle for the liberties of the Church 
meant in those days. The archbishop after election 
received his temporal possessions at the hands of the 
king by the symbolic gift of a pastoral staff", paid hom- 
age to his sovereign, and was then consecrated to office 
by the Church. It seems a trifle to invert that order 
and claim that each bishop must be duly consecrated 
to his pastoral duties by the Church, and only then 
receive his temporal possessions from the king. But 
the order of procedure showed what in the view of the 
Crown was the relative importance of the primate's 
functions. In the royal view the see of Canterbury was 
a fief held of the Crown, conferred by the Crown, bur- 
dened like all others with certain duties to the Crown. 
Unlike the other fiefs, it involved certain spiritual 



ROCKINGHAM 121 

duties and required certain spiritual powers in its 
possessor. These powers the Church conferred on the 
man to whom the Crown had ah*eady given the fief, 
and these duties the primate must fulfil to the Church. 
But the scene at Hastings proved how Rufus under- 
stood the order of procedure. The State's claim came 
first. The duties which the archbishopric like any 
other fief in England owed to the Crown, duties of 
providing soldiers and supplying money, were in his 
view paramount. And when his ambition dictated a 
war in Normandy, he meant, even at the risk of dislo- 
cating and impoverishing all the religious activities of 
England, to use the bishoprics and abbeys as a means 
to his end. The other duties could and must wait 
until these temporal necessities were satisfied. 

Anselm may have chosen an inopportune time to 
urge the needs of the Church. That was the mistake, 
if it was a mistake, of a man of absolute singleness of 
purpose to whom the first duty of the Church was to 
care for the morals and the religion of England. 
Was every effort for the spiritual good of the king- 
dom to wait on the royal will, on the chances of 
peace and war, on whether Rufus needed the revenues 
of abbeys and sees to prosecute his own schemes ? 
It was no mere academic question as to the order of 
procedure which Churchmen fought for, when they 
claimed that the consecration must come first, and 
that Church not king should have the right of inves- 
titure. The order was merely the outward symbol of 
the inward reality, that the spiritual duties of bishop 
or abbot ought to have precedence. The question was 
a most practical and urgent one, as it revealed itself on 
the beach at Hastings. Anselm was fairly involved in 



122 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

it, and was never during the rest of his life to be 
free from it. It was inevitable, as matters then stood 
in the Church, that he should sooner or later turn to 
Rome. For the Roman see had shown under Hilde- 
brand that it understood the gravity of and the wide 
issues involved in the question. 

At this period the Roman see had recovered from its 
temporary defeat in Hildebrand's exile and death. 
Urban ii. who succeeded the feeble Victor had won the 
upper hand in Italy. Matilda the great Countess 
had practically conquered Henr}^ iv. ; his wife and 
son had betrayed the hapless emperor into the hands 
of the papal party. Clement the antipope still held 
part of the city of Rome, but his power was so 
negligible that Urban could venture on leaving Italy. 
In the following year the pope would at the Synods 
of Piacenza and Clermont launch the first Crusade, 
and win new support through the deed. The respect 
which Urban won as representative of a purpose 
which was uniting all Christendom lent an increased 
moral weight to all his other edicts, and the pope 
was shrewdly calculating on the fact. The Crusades 
seem far enough away from the investiture debate. 
Directly and indirectly they helped to determine its 
issue. 

Since the time of Augustine's landing in England it 
had been considered essential to the exercise of his 
episcopal functions that each archbishop within a 
year of his consecration visited Rome and received his 
pallium at the hands of the pope. The pallium itself 
had become a stole of white wool in which four black 
crosses were inserted to represent the four cardinal 
virtues. Woven from the wool of two lambs which 



ROCKINGHAM 123 

were annually consecrated on the festival of St. Agnes 
at her church without the walls of Rome, laid on the 
tomb of St. Peter on the night preceding the festival 
of the apostle, and blessed at his altar on the day of 
the festival, the stole was meant to symbolise the 
purity which ought to characterise its recipient within 
and the obedience to the holy see which ought to dis- 
tinguish his conduct without. The benediction which 
was pronounced over it as it lay on St. Peter's altar 
closed with the prayer, " May this be to him a symbol 
of unity and a mark of perfect communion with the 
seat of the Apostle." That it must be claimed within 
a year of consecration was one of the significant 
rules by which the Church declared that none of its 
dignitaries was fully qualified for his office until he 
had received recognition from the Church itself. It 
was an act which might in one age fall into a for- 
mality and in another rise to the dignity of a principle, 
but the maintenance of which gave the Church its 
opportunity. In the days of its weakness the Church 
could suifer the full significance of the deed to fall 
into the background; in the days of its strength it 
could insist on all the meaning of the rite and use its 
unquestioned existence as a means of assault. 

William had already during the year showed his 
jealousy of any interference from Rome. When 
Herbert Losange, bishop of Thetford, repented his 
simony in paying 1000 marks for his bishopric and 
went to Rome to entreat pardon from the pope, the 
king summarily deposed him. It was therefore to be 
anticipated that he would raise difficulties over the 
question of the pallium. In November the war in 
Normandy was over, and troubles along the Welsh 



124 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

marches brought the king back in haste. In December 
1094 or January 1095 Ansehn visited him sore from 
his failure at Gillingham near Shaftesbury and asked 
leave to go to Rome for the pallium. It was already 
more than a year since the archbishop's consecration, 
and he could therefore now receive it only by the 
special grace of the pope. The king asked to which 
pope he meant to go. " To Urban," was the reply. 
" But," answered the king, " I have not acknowledged 
Urban. And, according to the practice of this realm 
both in my father's time and in my own no subject 
within the kingdom can acknowledge a pope without 
the king's leave. To challenge this right is to attempt 
nothing less than to take from me my crown." It was 
in vain that the archbishop reminded him how he had 
before accepting consecration given fair intimation 
that he did not mean to desert the allegiance which 
along with all Normandy he had pledged to Urban. 
The man, who shortly after his own consecration told 
one who reproached him for not remaining true to his 
word that it was impossible for any man to keep all 
his promises, was not likely to be very sympathetic 
with such a scruple. He reiterated that no one could 
acknowledge Urban without disloyalty to the service 
due to the king. The general question was then and 
still remains deserving of full consideration. Anselm 
however refused to accept its determination on the 
mere dictum of William. He asked that the question 
should be referred to a great council of the realm. 
At the same time he frankly warned the king that, 
even if the decision went against him, he dared not 
break his oath to Urban, and must in that event ask 
permission to leave the kingdom until the king's 



ROCKINGHAM 125 

decision for that pope enabled him to return with a 
clear conscience. This frankness with which Anselm 
always treated his opponents confused them as much 
as it helped him. They did not understand a man 
who imported sincerity into diplomacy. William and 
his advisers seem to have been unable to understand 
that when the archbishop gave his word he meant to 
keep it, and to have believed that either the allure- 
ments of office or the fear of the royal wrath must 
be sufficient to move him in time from his pledged 
word. And the only reward they received for their 
distrust in their adversary's honour was that they 
went to the decision of a great constitutional question 
with their hands tied. It must certainly be counted 
to Rufus for moderation that, instead of following his 
father's example and deciding the matter by his own 
will, he summoned a council at all. But by having 
permitted the archbishop's consecration with full know- 
ledge of the pledge to Urban, by allowing himself to 
believe that threats could move Anselm from a clear 
pledge, he surrendered half the strength of his position 
in the eyes of all fair-minded men in England, and 
prejudiced the' general question by uniting with it the 
individual case of the archbishop. 

On February 25 1095 a great council of lords 
temporal and spiritual was held at the castle of Rock- 
ingham. The castle, which the Conqueror had built 
" quite as much for the purpose of coercing the inhab- 
itants as for the protection of the glowing furnaces," 
lay on the northern edge of Northamptonshire, and 
was probably chosen for its present purpose because 
of its being a central place to which all England could 
come for so important a cause. The sittings were 



126 ANSELM AND HIS WORlL 

opened on Sunday in the church of the castle. The 
king himself was not present, but kept himself apart 
with a few of his special counsellors, of whom the 
chief were Robert of Meulan and William of St. 
Carileph, bishop of Durham. The former was an 
astute Norman, strong and clear of purpose, skilled 
in all the intricacies of feudal law, and with an in- 
tellect sharpened by the hundred points of casuistry to 
which it gave rise. The latter was a clever intriguer, 
ambitious, with more volubility than brains and more 
audacity than either. He has suffered the bitter fate 
of the loser in a great question, when the history of 
the struggle is written only by the winners, and has 
been represented as a mere court-bishop who hoped to 
flatter the king and by truckling to his wishes win 
for himself the archbishopric which he helped to force 
Anselm to renounce. But the two men at this time 
represented a policy of the hopelessness of which the 
Bishop of Durham later convinced himself. They 
stood on other grounds than mere self-interest for the 
divine authority of State and king in England. An 
expression used by John of Salisbury sums up the 
attitude of Robert of Meulan, " The true majesty is 
only that of God. The crime of lese r)iajeste can only 
be called such because the king is on earth the repre- 
sentative of God." It was no base ideal, the one which 
our Northern forefathers had in their minds when they 
refused their kings a poorer descent than that from 
the gods. And it would have been well for Europe 
had the Church recognised the truth which it contained. 
Churchmen could then have been fairer to their op- 
ponents, and they might have prevented men from 
thinking of patriotism and justice as mere natural 



ROCKINGHAM 127 

virtues, and from thrusting aside the affairs of the 
State as purely secular concerns. 

In the nave of the castle-church the bishops and 
nobles were met, and messages passed and repassed 
between them and the king's privy council. Anselm 
stated the position with grave simplicity, making no 
appeal to religious passion but speaking as he might 
have done to a class of his students at Le Bee. " The 
king had declared that, since he had not acknowledged 
Urban, he would not allow the primate to seek the 
pallium from that pope. And if Anselm received 
Urban or another as pope without the royal authority, 
or if having already acknowledged him he held to his 
determination, he was by that deed acting against the 
faith which was due to the king." Was this the law 
of England ? That was the matter which they must 
decide. But the archbishop went on to add somewhat 
to the bishops about the position in which he found 
himself. They all knew how he came to be their 
primate, and that the office was none of his own 
seeking. They must recognise his declaration that but 
for his fear of contravening the will of God he would 
rather have been cast into the fire than accept the 
office. They had persuaded him to put aside his own 
wishes and to undertake the burden, and they had 
promised their help in connection with the secular 
affairs in which he recognised his incapacity. The time 
had now come when he had a right to look for their 
guidance and help. Let them give him both, and 
remember the seriousness of the question they had to 
face. " For it is a serious matter to contemn and deny 
the vicar of St. Peter ; it is a serious matter to deny 
the faith which according to God I have pledged to 



128 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

the king : but this is no less serious, which has been 
said, that I cannot hold fast the one without denying 
the other." 

The council was in a grievous dilemma. The man 
before them had given his allegiance to Urban. In an 
hour of grave danger, to save themselves and the 
Church in England from a difficulty, they had called on 
him to undertake his present office. He had accepted it, 
but had taken care to define the terms on which alone 
he consented to undertake it. They had slurred over 
his conditions in the hope that something would turn 
up, that things would arrange themselves, that their 
pledge would not need to be redeemed. And now their 
promise was being claimed to the full. 

The answer which they gave w^as exactly what 
might have been expected from men who had been 
elected to their office as these were. The Conqueror 
had expelled simony, but he had sold the Church to 
pliability. As the bishops had bent their necks to enter, 
they were the more ready to bend their necks to remain. 
The superior clergy were not wanting in knowledge 
or piety ; but they w^ere Normans, aliens in sympathy 
and in tongue to their flocks, thrown as we have seen 
into dependence on the court. They abounded in 
expressions of confidence in the wisdom of their arch- 
bishop. He was so little in need of advice from his 
suffragans, that he had rather wisdom enough to 
advise both them and himself. But, if he still insisted 
on knowing their mind, they offered him the same 
counsel which in like case they would follow for them- 
selves. Let him submit himself absolutely to the 
king's will, and surrender Urban, The king would 
acknowledge a pope, when it pleased him. The arch- 



ROCKINGHAM 129 

bishop would join with him in that recognition, and 
then everything would again go well. No doubt there 
was the possibility of the king not acknowledging the 
right pope and of Anselm as a result being in a worse 
position than before. But men in a difficult situa- 
tion have a fine power of closing their eyes to the 
unpleasant possibilities of a course of action which 
promises to deliver them from a present difficulty. 

A great deal of unnecessary contempt has been 
poured on the bishops. Certainly theirs was not a 
heroic policy, and, what often counts more in the 
judgment of men, it was not the one which finally 
triumphed. But it is necessary to realise the situation 
which lay before them. They shared in principle with 
all Churchmen of their day the as yet undefined idea of 
the supremacy of the chair of St. Peter. But men had 
grown accustomed to regard the papal authority as not 
conferred by the Church, but as capable of being exer- 
cised only by one who received his appointment through 
the emperor. The Empire had not lost its sacrosanct 
character in men's minds. The popes were seeking to 
bring another idea before men, but they did not succeed 
till many years after this date. Still in men's eyes it 
was the business of the temporal power to acknowledge 
the pope. In England all intercourse with the papal 
see had been interrupted during several years without 
great direct loss to the state of English religion. What 
his bishops recommended Anselm to do was to continue 
the policy which had been followed by Lanfranc under 
William the Conqueror. The men believed, and, until 
time and the character of Rufus proved its impossibility, 
had a right to believe that that policy could be main- 
tained. To men who hold the papal supremacy to be 
9 



I30 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

of the substance of the faith their attitude must 
naturally appear to be a treachery to principle. But 
it is ever the misfortune of studying history in the 
light of a later dogma that it makes the student 
incapable of appreciating the motives of the men who 
were still fighting out the dogma, and that it converts 
all Church history into a series of black and white 
figures which is hopelessly unlike the real Church-life 
men see around them every day. 

On the Monday the council met again. Anselm re- 
newed his question, to receive the same answer. Now 
the matter which the bishops' answer overlooked was 
that the archbishop had already given his allegiance to 
Urban. Perhaps the night had given some of them 
opportunity to realise that they the religious leaders 
of the people were advising their primate to go back 
on his plighted word. At least some appeared to be 
ashamed and hung their heads. There was silence 
for a short time. At last Anselm gathered himself 
together and rising from his seat while his eyes flashed 
in his excitement he spoke. " Since you who are the 
shepherds of this Christian people and you who are 
named leaders of the nation deny counsel to me your 
head, save according to one man's will, I go to the 
Chief Shepherd, the Angel of great counsel. I take 
from Him the counsel which I follow in this which 
is not merely my cause but His, and that of His 
Church. He has said to the most blessed of the apostles, 
' Thou art Peter and on this rock will I build My 
Church.' Again He has said to all the apostles, ' He that 
hears you hears Me, and he that despises you despises 
Me, and whosoever touches you touches the apple of 
Mine eye.' It was first to St. Peter and in him to the 



ROCKINGHAM 131 

other apostles, it is first to the vicar of St. Peter and 
through him to the other bishops that these words as 
we believe were spoken, — to no emperor, king, duke, or 
count. But that in which we must submit to earthly 
rulers, the same Angel of great counsel teaches, ' Render 
to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the 
things that are God's.' These are the words and the 
counsels of God. These I accept, and from these I 
decline to depart. Know therefore that in the things 
of God I will render obedience to the vicar of St. Peter 
and that in those which pertain to the earthly honour 
of the king my master I will render him true counsel 
and ministry unto the best of my knowledge and 
power." 

The bold declaration irritated the assembly. They 
angrily refused to become the bearers of such a message 
to the king. Anselm unwontedly stirred went into the 
inner room and delivered his message in person ; then 
leaving the king angry among his troubled counsellors, 
he came back to his place and quietly fell asleep. There 
was a long delay. The king's party had evidently come 
to the council without a clear plan of action. They 
had misunderstood the man with whom they had to 
deal, had mistaken his gentleness of nature for flaccidity, 
and had hoped that when he found himself alone 
against the whole court he would surrender his position. 
They had no further advice to offer except a repetition 
of the old method. In the late afternoon accordingly 
the king's messengers returned to the church and bade 
the archbishop understand that this must come to an 
end. He had troubled the kingdom long enough and 
roused the indignation of all its chiefs by his pre- 
sumptuous attack on the royal prerogative. And this 



132 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

prerogative of the Crown which he had assaulted was 
that which their king valued most, since by virtue of 
it he was superior to every other king in Christendom. 
William declined tamely to submit to its surrender, 
since even if he were willing his people would be 
wounded in their pride by his submission. And as for 
Urban what after all could he do for the benefit of 
the archbishop ? To win Urban's approval would 
bring him little good, if in the effort to win it he 
embittered his king against him. And if by sur- 
rendering the point he could win the king's favour, 
what harm could Urban's anger do to him ? Let him 
assert his freedom, let him be free as became an arch- 
bishop of Canterbury from any foreign interference, 
and when he had surrendered this point everything 
would go well. 

The cynicism of the argument wearied the arch- 
bishop, already jaded by the unwonted excitement of 
the dsiy. A man of his high nature is not unwounded, 
when religious men speak as though a promise were 
nothing, and as though self-interest must outweigh a 
man's loyalty to his word. And to one who saw how 
much England was in need of a moral reformation and 
who found that the men who ought to have helped him 
to effect it were prepared to advise their archbishop to 
weigh his loyalty in the scales of profit and loss it 
must have been a heavy blow. He told them wearily 
that he was not prepared to abjure his pledge to Urban, 
but that, if they allowed him a night's rest, he would 
answer them to-morrow as God guided him to speak. 
Perhaps he distrusted his own power of self-control. 

But William of St. Carileph had promised the king 
either the resignation of the archbishop or his renuncia- 



ROCKINGHAM 133 

tion of the pope. And now he misunderstood the man. 
Surely Anselm was wavering. Surely the loneliness in 
which he found himself had shaken his nerve. If they 
pressed him home now, they must certainly win. He 
came back from the king with a message couched in 
bullying terms. There was to be no delay, unless he 
was prepared to yield the point. " Without that the 
king adjures the hate of Almight}^ God on himself, 
and we his lieges unite in the adjuration, if he 
allow an hour longer this delay for which you ask till 
to-morrow." 

It was the last bolt, and with a weaker man 
it might have succeeded. Except for Gondulf of 
Rochester, Anselm found himself forsaken by the 
episcopate. He did not know the temper of the 
nobles, and had no right to expect them to move 
in his defence, when his clerical brethren failed him. 
A stranger unable even to speak the language of the 
people to whom it was his lot to minister, alone in the 
darkening church, he deserved to be forgiven had he 
surrendered. But his answer was as decisive as it was 
quiet. " Whoever would prove that because I will not 
renounce the obedience of the venerable bishop of the 
Holy Roman Church, I violate my faith and oath to my 
earthly king, let him come forward, and he shall find 
me ready to answer him as I ought and where I ought." 
The check was met by countercheck. And the counter- 
check was a defiance which made the bishops pause. 
Whether they in the heat of their eagerness had 
forgotten the fact, or had counted on the monk's 
ignorance of the immunities of his see, is uncertain. 
But Anselm had hit the weakness of their position. 
They could not even try him. The only court which was 



134 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

competent to do so was the court of Rome. The 
baffled messengers could only retire. 

And in the gathering dusk where the frail monk 
sat wearied among his few supporters a sense of the 
dignity of this one man who alone in all England dared 
to show front to the dreaded Rufus crept into the 
minds of some among the commons. Suddenly a knight 
detached himself from the rest, and kneeling before 
the archbishop bade him be of good cheer. " Re- 
member how holy Job on the dungheap routed the 
devil and avenged Adam whom the devil had routed 
in Paradise." The quaint, uncouth words went round 
the archbishop's heart like wine. For it is something, 
let a man have fought for as high ends as he will and 
be fully convinced of the righteousness of his cause, to 
know that he is not alone. Probably the knight knew 
little about the immediate issue of the struggle, under- 
stood little about papal claims and royal rights. But 
the English sense of fairplay was appealed to, and that 
deeper sense of the right to appeal to law against the 
tyranny of power which has rarely deserted the race. 
It was a day to be marked with a white stone in the 
cause of English liberty and English law, the day 
when the lustful arrogant Norman kings learned 
that there was a limit set to their power, and that 
any man, monk, priest, or layman, dared resist their 
will. 

What the knight showed that the English commons 
had seen the Norman nobles were to learn next day, 
that Anselm was fighting a battle which involved the 
rights of every man in England. Among the royal 
counsellors there was great dismay. They knew not 
what to advise. They could not gainsay Anselm's 



ROCKINGHAM 135 

position, for they agreed with him in his interpretation 
of Scripture : they did but follow the usual practice of 
disliking its application. There was no desire on their 
part to abjure the pope. But now Rufus began to turn 
against them. The king felt that he had been led into 
a, position where defeat was sure to lessen his authority 
more than if the whole question had never been raised. 
Naturally, being the man he was, the Red King began 
to show his teeth in an unpleasant way to the men 
whose advice had helped to bring him into his present 
difficulty. 

When the morning of Tuesday came, William of St. 
Carileph had no better counsel to offer than violence. 
The king was free to take what the king had given, ring 
and pastoral staff. Let him in the exercise of his royal 
prerogative depose the presumptuous prelate who had 
dared oppose him. The plan suited the clerical party 
in the council, since by means of it they threw the odium 
of removing Anselm on the king. But the laymen 
interfered. Had there been any fault in the arch- 
bishop, they might not have done so. England was not 
then so satisfied of the inviolability of the clergy that 
they would have risen to prevent a king from unfrock- 
ing a discreditable prelate. But the archbishop was 
not merely a great ecclesiastic, he was also one of the 
chief nobles of the land, who like themselves held a fief 
at the king's hand. If one of their class untried and 
uncondemned could be stripped of title and property by 
a mere act of the royal will, which of them all could be 
accounted secure ? They too came to see that, because 
of the way in which William had elected to regard the 
matter, the archbishop stood for the question whether 
common justice any longer endured in England. And 



136 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

they like the commons closed round him, if only for 
their own sake. 

But what was now to be done ? Something must 
be done forthwith, for the king swore that he was pre- 
pared to brook none as his equal in England, and that, 
if his counsellors did not show themselves willing to 
wreak his vengeance on Anselm, he meant to wreak 
it on them. Grimly Robert of Meulan described the 
situation. He spoke with the keen enjoyment of a 
man who loves the finesses of law for their own sake, 
and who cannot help admiring the dexterity of an 
opponent, even when that dexterity threatens to spoil 
his own favourite schemes. " Truly I know not what 
to say. We arrange the long day through a scheme. 
We talk it over and determine how it is going to hold 
together. And meantime he sleeps and troubles him- 
self not. But no sooner has the scheme been laid 
before him than with a breath of his lips he bursts it 
as if it were a cobweb." 

At last the king himself hit on a strange scheme. 
Though the bishops as Anselm's sufiragans could not 
try him, they could at least deny him their obedience 
and their brotherly fellowship : the king for his part 
did hereby deny him all furtherance within the realm. 
The unhappy bishops had gone too far to retreat. 
There was nothing to be done except to proceed on the 
way they had chosen. So they went to their arch- 
bishop and bade him understand he need no longer 
expect fellowship or obedience from them. Anselm 
gravely replied that for his part he did not find it quite 
so easy to renounce duties which he had once vowed to 
fulfil. As he had taken his solemn vow of all Christian 
service to the king, the see, and England, he meant, 



ROCKINGHAM 137 

while he remained primate, to maintain his vow and 
to fulfil his duty. Their renunciation made it more 
difficult adequately to fulfil the duty ; but difficulty ab- 
solved no man from duty and least of all from a duty 
which he had pledged himself before God and Holy 
Church to fulfil. And this answer he begged them to 
bear to the king. 

It was the simple answer of a Christian gentleman, 
but it dissatisfied and embarrassed the Red King. He 
had hoped to drive the harassed primate to resign. He 
turned to the nobles who stood by, and asked from 
them the same renunciation of their obedience. The 
nobles however declined. " We were never his men, 
nor can we abjure an oath of fealty which we never 
swore. But this he is — he is our archbishop. It is his 
to oversee Christian religion in this land, and we who 
are Christian men cannot reject his oversight, while we 
are in this land, and especially while no stain of wrong 
which can justify your action is found in him." The 
laymen of England had proved themselves more quick 
to the appeal of honour, more ready to see the claim of 
justice than its Churchmen. The single fact is sufficient 
proof of the need for reform within the Church in 
England. 

But the bishops must drink the cup of their de- 
gradation to the dregs, for again the king demanded 
from them what precisely their renunciation of the 
primate implied. Was it unconditional, or did they 
only renounce obedience to him, so far as he spoke in 
the name and by the authority of the pope ? Accord- 
ing to their answer was the treatment which was meted 
out to them. Those who renounced Anselm without 
any reservation were retained in favour, but those 



138 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

who admitted any reservations in their abjuration re- 
quired to show reason why the king should continue 
favourable to them: the cause was shown after the 
fashion they had once recommended to Anselm, by 
liberal gifts of money. 

The archbishop resolved to quit the kingdom. 
Whether he proposed to go to Rome for his pallium, 
or whether he had cause to fear that Rufus' denun- 
ciation of protection left even his personal safety 
insecure, he demanded a safe-conduct to the nearest 
port. But this did not suit the king's plans. He 
dared not suffer Anselm to go beyond sea, practically 
a banished man, and the living proof of his king's 
injustice. For the primate of all England to fall into 
his brother's hands in Normandy would be for Robert 
to win a strong support. And, although Rufus had 
been once defeated in the duchy, he had not the least 
intention of surrendering all hopes of a final conquest. 
Besides, the attitude of the nobles and commons had 
startled the royal counsellors. A truce was accordingly 
patched up between king and archbishop. Until the 
next Whitsuntide the question should remain undeter- 
mined, and meantime nothing should be done by either 
party to prejudice the question or to molest each other. 
Rufus observed the truce as might have been expected 
of him. While Anselm lived quietly on the manors 
belonging to his see and strove by every poor means 
left to him to strengthen discipline and raise the 
standard of morals in the Church in England, the king 
worried him in paltry and evil ways. Baldwin, the 
archbishop's right hand, to whom we suspect it was 
in no small measure due that Anselm was able to steer 
cautiously through the many difficulties in which he 



ROCKINGHAM 139 

had been involved, v^as banished. And the royal officers 
tormented the unhappy dependants of Canterbury with 
unjust and ruinous charges until the poor wretches com- 
plained it had been better for them in the days when 
they had no archbishop than it was under their pre- 
sent head. Something however had been won. That 
Anselm had been able to withstand the Red King's 
anger, to defy his utmost power and yet to go free 
in England was in itself a promise of better days for 
English liberty. And it was further the educator of 
a sense of justice in the hearts of Englishmen, without 
which the new liberty would have been worse than 
useless, and without which a casual victory on a ques- 
tion of Church politics must have remained trifling 
and ineffective. 



CHAPTEE VIII 

The Rupture at Winchester 

The primate was now very solitary in England. His 
encounter with the kine: had shown how little com- 
munity of spirit existed between himself and his 
bishops. Gondulf, his friend of the cloister, was near 
at Rochester, but Gondulf could follow, he could not 
advise ; he had made of Anselm in the years at Le Bee 
the whetstone on which he sharpened the edge of his 
piety and principles, he did so still. The lonely 
and harassed man turned longingly to the monastic 
life from which he had been dragged to govern the 
Church in England. Among the monks at St. Saviour's 
he felt himself at home. He had once called Le Bee 
his nest, he now half playfully, half wistfully spoke 
of himself as an owl : '' When I sit here among my 
fledglings I am at peace. When I am among those 
secular affairs, I am like an owl in the daylight, 
which flies helplessly amid attacking daws and crows." 
But then the fact that he could not conscientiously 
remain at St. Saviour's, that he had accepted tasks 
which he could not fulfil, smote him ; and he fell to 
weeping among his monks. " Have pity upon me, O 
my friends, have pity upon me, for the hand of God 
has touched me." He was primate of all England, 

140 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 141 

responsible in his measure for the condition of religion 
there; and the Church's work was not being done in 
England. A less sensitive spirit might have thrown 
the entire responsibility for that on the conditions 
which hindered him. But the man who had once 
written concerning the simpler decisions of the indi- 
vidual conscience, Terret me vita viea (" My life appals 
me "), was capable of a keener self-reproach, when he 
realised the far-reaching influence upon other lives 
alike of his action and his inaction. 

What was within his power he still wrought. At 
the request of Murierdarch, King of Ireland, two monks 
were instructed and consecrated at Canterbury for 
the bishoprics of Dublin and Wat erf or d. In later 
years he continued to watch over and guide the king 
and his new bishops. There are numerous letters to 
abbeys and religious houses in England, which can 
date from this period alone. But a new tone appears 
in the archbishop's letters. Out of them has died the 
happy spontaneity which through the lumbering school- 
Latin lends a charm to the letters from Le Bee. The 
English letters are more professional. They are no 
longer written by a man to whom the kingdom of God 
is the supreme interest in life to another about whom 
the writer can take it for granted that the same is 
true. They are not written in the happy confidence 
that the reader judging their spirit will not be quick 
to condemn an unguarded expression. The writer 
knows that every sentence will be weighed. The 
letters remain a source of information on the condition 
of ecclesiastical aflairs : they more seldom give a 
glimpse into the life of a man who trembles before the 
judgment and the mercy of his God. Responsibility 



142 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

and factious opposition have touched this pure spirit 
with their harsher influences. 

In some directions the archbishop was difficult to 
educate. It was a period when men in hours of mortal 
sickness or peril were willing to vow to the Church 
gifts which they afterwards heartily grudged to pay. 
Men gave a farm to Holy Church, and then sought to 
litigate the bishop out of its rent. The conflict lent a 
zest like that of battle to the piping times of peace. 
And the fact that king and archbishop were known to 
be in opposition gave men courage to encroach upon 
the rights of the Church. Anselm was ill fitted by 
nature for scuffles of that description. When he was 
forced to interfere in the struggles which human 
passions provoke, disgust overpowered him and he 
became positively ill. " What would you ? " he said. 
" I have for so long a period banished all love and all 
desire for the things of this world, that I can find for 
them neither force nor zeal. I confess it : when these 
melancholy interests come to assail me, it is to me a 
horrible apparition, and I shudder as a child does at 
the sight of some hideous object." His advisers told 
him that his tenants were swindling him, that many 
were advancing claims which they themselves knew to 
be unjust. " What ? " he answered. " Are they not 
then Christian men ? Do they not make their asser- 
tion of the truth and righteousness of their cause 
without flinching ? It cannot be that they thus per- 
jure their own souls for the sake of a little gain." 

An impracticable dreamer some of the warriors and 
busy Churchmen of the court doubtless judged their 
primate to be. Yet he was a man who in the few 
things about which he greatly cared had a will of 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 143 

steel. His very indifference about the other matters 
made him more impossible to move. That too they had 
begun to discover and were to discover more thoroughly 
in later years. And the strangeness of the discovery 
in the life of their leading Churchman stirred in the 
more thoughtful a curious wonder whether Christianity 
does not after all mean to seek first the kingdom of 
God and His righteousness. 

The large simplicities for which and among which 
the man lived told on the consciences of men. They 
could not but be stirred by the witness among them 
of one who behind the pomp of the archbishopric 
maintained the austerity of the monk (almost more, 
Eadmer hints, than befitted a great prelate), and who 
bore it not as a yoke but as a gracious habit which 
had ceased to be felt a burden. What monasticism at 
its purest has always represented was preached among 
them by the life of their chief bishop. Those who 
were admitted to the archiepiscopal palace were 
astonished by the plainness of its dress and food. 
When the reader at the dinner-table entered on a 
subject which interested the archbishop or read a 
passage in Scripture which seemed to demand explana- 
tion, Anselm was wont to use it as the theme of a 
discussion. And men noted that when he talked he 
ate most, for then one of his fond monks made it his 
business to supply his master's plate with food, which 
he ate more abundantly, because he forgot what he 
was doing. In the private meals of his household 
he appeared to live on a mere trifle. Yet did he 
urge those who finding him wait for them hurried 
over their meat to be nowise embarrassed on his 
account. And, did he see one who relished his food, he 



144 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

looked at him smilingly, and lifting his hand gave 
his benediction, " May it profit the eater." These are 
trivialities, but they impressed a man who was 
Anselm's companion and who was also an Englishman. 
The fact that he counted them worth mention in the 
Life of the archbishop suggests that self-control in the 
common appetites had become strange in the eyes of 
Englishmen, and that there was a wonder to them in a 
life which even in trifles practised the grace of self- 
denial. 

Anselm however was and felt himself wearily alone. 
The matters which interested him most, the questions 
of theology and metaphysics over which he had 
brooded at Le Bee, were of a nature for which no 
man cared in England. The matters which he had 
been appointed to regulate were withheld from his 
interference. And meantime England seemed in 
morals and in faith to go from bad to worse. No 
synod could be held without the king's permission. 
No decision of the archbishop had any force without 
the king's support. For all such matters Rufus cared 
nothing at all. He had his own aims, which he pursued 
with a high courage and a resolute ambition. But it 
rested on Anselm as a continual burden that to his 
care was delivered the charge of Christian religion in 
the realm. There was little he could do save live a 
holy and a simple life. But was that all which the 
Church in England and its Head had a right to expect 
at the hands of the primate ? 

Suddenly a royal edict appeared which announced 
that Urban was recognised as pope in the kingdom. 
There had been a special reason why the king was 
unwilling to suffer Anselm to leave England while still 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 145 

seized of the archbishopric. With the cunning which 
often passes for statecraft he had during the negotia- 
tions at Rockingham secretly despatched to Rome two 
of his chaplains, Gerard and William of Warelwast. 
They were instructed to make inquiry as to the state 
of affairs between the rival popes and by acknowledging 
one secure from him the pallium. At that time Rufus 
was still hopeful that Anselm could be persuaded to 
resign or compelled to demit his office. With the 
pallium in his ov/n hands the king designed to institute 
a new archbishop and invest him with the coveted 
stole. By this means the royal prerogative would be 
materially advanced, since the king thus secured an 
apparent right to confer not merely ring and staff but 
even the pallium. That part of the scheme was 
shattered by the firmness of Anselm and the barons. 
But if the king had suffered the archbishop to go 
beyond sea still invested with his dignity he would 
have been left with the useless pallium in his hands. 

William however had to deal with subtler brains 
than his own when he met the leaders of the Roman 
Curia. His envoys finding Urban in possession of 
Rome acknowledged him on behalf of their master. 
But the pope entrusted the precious sign of office not 
to them, but to Walter, cardinal bishop of Albano, 
whom he appointed legate and sent to England in 
order to investigate the whole position of affairs. The 
mission itself was a gain for Rome — no legate had 
been allowed to enter England since the early years of 
the Conqueror. The first anxiety of the legate was to 
make sure of the king and of England. Accordingly 
he had no sooner landed than he hurried through 
Canterbury without halting to confer with the 
10 



146 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

primate, and made his way to the court. Men were 
astonished that Anselm who had suffered for Rome was 
ignored in this fashion, and were still more astonished 
when they saw the yielding attitude which Walter 
adopted toward the king. They began to whisper that 
Rufus had gold at his command and that the Curia 
was ever venal. But the legate played his cards with 
great dexterity. By flattery and apparent submission 
he persuaded the king to issue the decree, which 
acknowledged Urban as pope in England. But when 
Rufus demanded that the legate should by virtue of 
his authority depose the troublesome primate, the scene 
was changed. Now nothing was heard of except the 
extreme gravity of deposing an archbishop without 
any form of trial, and the reminder of how, whatever 
Anselm had been as a subject of England, he had 
committed no wrong as metropolitan. As to the 
pallium the legate refused to deliver it up, and urged 
delay in order that a reconciliation might be eflected. 
It was no part of Rome's policy to suffer the stole to be 
conferred by lay hands. Rufus tried the means which 
he believed to be omnipotent, a large bribe to the 
cardinal and to the papal court ; but this was abso- 
lutely declined. Justice was now inflexible. The king 
found he had committed himself irrevocably to Urban, 
and had nothing for his pains. 

All that remained to be done was to make the best 
of an evil bargain, and to use the pallium as a means 
of extorting money from Anselm. By this time the 
truce agreed on at Rockingham was nearly at an end. 
The archbishop was summoned to meet the king at 
Windsor. He came to one of his manors near Hayes 
and was there met by a number of the bishops who 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 147 

asked whether he was prepared to make peace by the 
payment of a sum of money to the king. Anselm had 
grown weary of the sordid business. More bluntly 
than usual he refused ; he declined to reveal to the 
world that the friendship of his sovereign was put 
up for sale. Probably the bishops thought that the 
fact needed no revelation at that time of day, for they 
merely asked what was his alternative. Anselm 
answered that he had seen no reason to alter his former 
resolution and wished to repeat his request for a safe- 
conduct out of the kingdom. The bishops then 
informed him that he need not leave England, for 
the pallium was at Windsor and could there be 
obtained from the legate. Surely in these circum- 
stances he would pay for this sign of honour, and 
give at least as much as his journey to Rome with its 
inevitable heavy expenses would have cost. " Honour," 
sighed the weary primate. " God who reads my heart 
knows in what esteem I count an honour of that 
nature." But he was resolute ; pay he would not. 

Rufus was beaten at every point, and he knew it. 
Other cares of state however claimed his attention. 
The king had trysted to the Whitsuntide court a very 
different guest from his gentle archbishop. Robert of 
Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, had failed to 
appear at the Easter court in Winchester. The Dark 
Earl had always been suspect. He had been concerned 
in the conspiracy which almost ousted Rufus before he 
had well become king. Since the king had long 
desired revenge and had recently had cause to suspect 
fresh conspiracy in the North, he had issued an ulti- 
matum requiring his subject to appear at Windsor, or 
abide the issue. Mowbray, with some other of the 



148 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

Northern barons, had failed to appear. William, who 
never threatened unless he meant to fulfil, was muster- 
ing his strength for war. The attempt to extort money 
from Anselm had doubtless been prompted by the 
necessities of the war. When this hope failed Eufus 
fairly threw up the game. He received the archbishop 
and showed a more friendly spirit than at any time 
since his consecration. While the two sat together in 
presence of the assembled court, the legate entered and 
after the fashion of legates abounded in seemly plati- 
tudes. Behold, he said, how good and joyful a 
thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. 
He had not, Eadmer adds drily, done anything to 
promote that unity. However, after the fashion of his 
kind he sat down and talked about it. 

A slight difficulty threatened at the last moment to 
disturb the peace. In order to save the king's face, 
Anselm was asked to accept the pallium from Wil- 
liam's hands. But the archbishop had learned what 
important conclusions could be read into the simplest 
forms. He had fought for the stole as a dignity 
which the king was incompetent to confer : to receive 
it now at the king's hands was merely to surrender the 
principle which he had asserted. It was accordingly 
arranged that the legate should lay the precious 
treasure on the altar at Canterbury, and that thence 
Anselm should take it as a gift from the Church itself. 
Legate Walter arrived at the city 27th May 1095, and 
was met at the gates by a long procession of monks 
who came out to do reverence to the symbol of papal 
authority. The procession was closed by the episcopate 
of all England, between whose ranks walked their 
primate clad in the full robes of his office but bare- 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 149 

footed. The pallium was borne in and laid on the 
altar. Anselm kneeling lifted it, kissed it, presented 
it to be kissed by the bystanders, put it on his shoulders, 
and now at length acknowledged by king and pope as 
Primate of all England and Archbishop of Canterbury, 
proceeded to celebrate high mass in his own cathedral. 
Behind him the reader read the Gospel for the day. 
And again as had happened at a like ceremonial he 
read that a certain man made a great feast and bade 
many, but they all with one consent began to make 
excuse. All who heard noted the coincidence, and 
some may have realised how the final power of all 
ceremonies whether of royal or papal institution rests 
on the faith of the multitude in their value. 

There followed for Anselm a year of outward peace. 
William was too busy with the Northern troubles to 
seek new methods of worrying his archbishop. He 
showed an unwonted clemency toward the Church 
and even an alacrity in filling some of the vacant sees. 
Baldwin and the other monks who had been banished 
during the truce were permitted to return. Herbert of 
Thetford had his bishopric restored. Within a year 
after the death of the Bishops of Worcester and 
Hereford, the king filled up the vacancies, the former 
by the appointment of Samson of Bayeux, the latter by 
that of chaplain or clerk Gerard. Both were conse- 
crated by Anselm in St. Paul's in London, June 15 1096. 

Whether the change in the king's temper made men 
think it prudent to show themselves friendly to 
their archbishop, or some of the bishops began to be 
ashamed of their past conduct, two of the episcopate — 
Osmund of Salisbury and Robert of Hereford — had 
followed Anselm on his way to receive the pallium at 



150 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

Canterbury and craved forgiveness. It was no sooner 
asked than given. The primate did not even wait till 
they had reached the city, but leading the way into a 
little church by the wayside absolved them there. 
Others were inclined to submit, but were unable to 
repent frankly. They strove to justify their past 
action, and they found support, where it might least 
have been expected, from the papal legate. That 
dignitary had not yet quitted England ; he remained 
to complete the work for which he had been sent. 
Anselm in the eyes of Rome's legate was worthy of 
support, but was not sufficiently ultramontane. He 
had fought against Rufus for the property of the 
Church and for the due recognition of Urban, but he 
had accepted ring and staff from the king. The arch- 
bishop must be brought into closer sympathy with the 
new claims of Rome. Walter set himself to trouble 
the scrupulous spirit of Anselm. 

When William marched North, he summoned the 
archbishop to Nottingham to bless his arms, and en- 
trusted him with viceregal powers over the south and 
east of England. The king's enemies on the Con- 
tinent were not unlikely to seize the opportunity of 
his absence in Northumberland, in order to attack 
Kent. In the exercise of these new duties, Anselm 
was confined to Canterbury: to leave it would have 
thrown him open to the suspicion of neglecting duty. 
To him with this fresh anxiety the legate wrote 
requiring him to attend an interview, at which they 
might confer about the appalling abuses under which 
reliction was sufFerincr in the realm. The sudden 
request from one who had studiously ignored his 
position seems to have nettled the gentle saint. It 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 151 

was impossible, he wrote, for him to leave his post 
even for that important end. Besides, if they did 
meet, any decisions at which they arrived were worth- 
less without the consent of the king : an interview 
therefore in Rufus' absence was wasted time. But 
Anselm further suggested that the legate who now 
professed so deep an interest in these questions had 
already had many opportunities for the interview he 
craved during the days he spent at court and kept 
himself carefully aloof from the archbishop. 

In his reply Walter showed his aim more clearly. 
One cause of the religious condition he found in 
the unhappy relations between the primate and his 
suffragans. The latter were troubled but were not 
prepared to take on themselves the entire blame for 
the situation. They had found themselves unable to 
support Anselm, because he had done homage to a 
schismatic king, i.e. to one who had not accepted 
Urban as pope, and had submitted to consecration 
from bishops who for a like reason were in schism. 
Anselm fairly roused tore the flimsy excuse to tatters. 
" Certainly I knew not then, nor do I now know that 
they have been in schism, and, to use their own word, 
separated from the Church. ... In reality they did 
not reject the authority of the pontiff, as little did 
they deny that Urban was pontiff': they were but 
uncertain because of recent troubles and therefore 
postponed their recognition of him. No judgment 
had ever cut them off from the Church, they confessed 
themselves submissive to the Holy See ; it was under 
this profession of obedience that they consecrated me. 
Further our lord the pope knew that I had been 
consecrated and by whom, and to which king I had 



152 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

offered homage ; yet he sent me by the mean of 
your charity the pallium usually given to the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, not as to a schismatic but a 
recognised bishop. By that he has confirmed my 
consecration. He who has been the instrument of 
this confirmation, my lord Walter, bishop of Albano 
and cardinal, knew all these things when he fulfilled 
the commands of the pope. If this accusation seemed 
serious to 3^ou, why did you not speak to me of it 
before conferring the pallium ? If it seems to you 
contemptible, you yourself can judge how you ought 
now to spurn it under foot. You call God to witness 
that so far as lay in your power you have defended 
my cause, and that this has prevented you until now 
from completing your mission. I thank you for 
your goodwill to defend me, but am not aware that 
on my side you have met any hindrance in the com- 
pletion of your mission. Your Reverence says that 
you have been unable to confer with me and with 
the others as much as you have wished. It is for 
you to know the cause of that inability. For myself 
I know that I long and strongly wished to speak 
with you before I had the opportunity : even when I 
was able, it was a more scant opportunity than I 
had desired." 

The saint could hit hard when he chose. A man 
who owned that power of restrained and courteous 
irony and used it so rarely exercised a self-control 
of which few men who wield the pen are capable. 
And there are some to whom such self-restraint will 
appeal more powerfully than the fact that he slept 
hard and ate and drank like a hermit. 

The legate left England. To all appearance he had 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 153 

not much to show as the result of his mission, but 
in reality he had done his work. He had secured 
England's recognition of Pope Urban, and given 
nothing in return. He had dropped anxieties into 
the mind of Anselm which would bring him nearer 
Rome. Mabillon has suggested that the whole aim 
of Walter was to extract money from the archbishop 
in return for the pallium. That may be the case, 
though the suspicion rests on nothing higher than 
the most venomous type of gossip, the gossip of 
the cloister. The man was carrying out in his own 
way the policy of Rome, and as events proved suc- 
cessfully. Lanfranc had practically lived beyond the 
control of Rome, and had governed the Church in 
England without its interference, though in theory 
he had never thought of denying papal authorit}^ 
We have seen how the established practice gave rise 
to theory, and how men who found independence 
practicable began to ask whether it were not as well 
to cast off even the forms of allegiance. How far 
the archbishop shared this spirit Rome did not and 
could not know. The legate was there to find out 
the state of affairs, and had a free hand to work 
toward rebinding this 'pa'pa alterius orhis — this pope 
of a second world — to the central authority. 

The method he took was cruel but effective. He 
wrought through the scrupulous conscience of the pri- 
mate. Anselm was able to disprove all his charges ; 
but they were sure to rankle. There were irregu- 
larities in his election. He had paid homage to 
Rufus, and the papal court was forbidding homage 
with a new stringency. It was true that Urban had 
sent him the pallium and so recognised him, but 



154 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

those things remained. The legate's hint about his 
inability to do all he wished for the correction of 
abuses could be repelled, and the condition of affairs 
shown to be due to no negligence on Anselm's part. 
But the hint rendered more acute the primate's 
sense of impotence and need for outside help. The 
legate of the very court for whose prerogative he 
had fought passed him by and left him to learn the 
object of the mission from a royal decree. That 
might have been a piece of insolent discourtesy on 
the part of a cardinal, but it might have been an 
official act. This man was the pope's legate. Was 
not his view the one which would be represented 
and might be accepted at Rome ? Did Rome 
count his election dubious, his position uncertain, his 
loyalty unreliable ? These things which a man whose 
position was happy could lightly and easily have 
tossed aside sank into and rankled in the lonely and 
troubled heart. He must go himself to Rome. 
Already in a letter in which he sent to Urban his 
thanks and a gift for the pallium he found it neces- 
sary to excuse himself for not coming to Rome on 
the ground of the troubled state of Europe, of his 
own precarious health, of the difficulty of his relations 
with the king. An event which soon followed precipi- 
tated the desire into action. 

For a period the affairs of the Church had not 
busied Rufus. His energies were needed for other 
tasks. He flung himself fiercely against De Mowbray 
in Northumberland. When the conspirators shut 
themselves up in Bamborough and thought that its 
stout walls must exhaust the energies of the assailants, 
their king built a tower to shut them in. The Welsh 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 155 

had risen at the news of the revolt and were harrying 
across their borders. His tower made Rufus able 
without raising the siege of Bamborough to march 
against the West. The terror of his presence was 
sufficient and the invaders withdrew within their 
own frontier. The king satisfied himself with some 
random harrying which increased their terror, and 
hurried back to capture the obstinate fortress and 
wreak his long desired vengeance on the rebels. 

This took place during 1095. In November of the 
same year Urban held the great council at Clermont, 
and by his fiery eloquence kindled the first Crusade. 
Directly that movement left England untouched, the 
enthusiasm seemed to be quenched in the Channel. 
Neither the king nor the archbishop, though for 
very different reasons, ever showed much interest in 
its progress. But indirectly it influenced the politics 
of the kingdom and the fate of Anselm. The Crusade 
sprang into vigorous life in Normandy. Among the 
many who took the cross was Robert, its count. 
His versatile mind, easily captivated by an outward 
form of devotion which had little moral claim, found 
food for what it called its religion in the excite- 
ment. His vanity was appealed to by the prospect 
of heading the movement. He resolved to go, and, 
since his dominions must not be left unguarded and 
ungoverned, since his empty purse must be replenished, 
he determined to secure the one and fill the other 
by pledging the county of Normandy to his brother 
of England. It was William's opportunity of gaining 
without a blow the foothold across the Channel 
which had never ceased to be the secret object of 
his ambition. A bargain was struck, according to 



156 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

which William agreed to pay his brother 10,000 marks 
and to hold Normandy in pledge during three years. 
The money could be wrung from England; and as 
for the restitution, even if Robert ever returned, he 
might return in no condition to demand the restora- 
tion of his rights. 

William never had any money, he had to wring 
the marks from reluctant England. Since the sum 
was in a remote sense required for furthering the 
ends of the Church, there was more apparent right 
than usual in extorting part of it from the Church. 
To raise the required sum, relics were sold, missals 
and gospels were stripped of their costly coverings, 
gold and jewels were torn from altars. Anselm 
thought himself bound to offer his share. He needed 
to borrow the 200 marks from the conventual 
chapter at Canterbury, but in return pledged the 
revenues of his manor of Peckham to the monks for 
seven years. 

In 1096 William crossed into Normandy to take 
over the administration of his newly acquired pro- 
perty. But the restless Welsh broke into England, 
so soon as his strong hand was lifted from them. 
He hurried back in February 1097 and repelled 
their attack. When that was done, the king had 
reached the summit of his ambition. At peace within 
his own realm, he was the master of Normandy. One 
thing was needed in order to satisfy him, that he should 
succeed in breaking the one man who had dared 
resist his will and so be free to despoil the Church 
of its possessions. The opportunity was found in 
the contingent which the archbishop had furnished 
for the Welsh war. Anselm was summoned to answer 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 157 

in the king's court for having sent to his king's 
need a body of ill-found and ill-trained troops. Most 
writers on the period take it for granted that the 
complaint was unjustified. More probably it was 
well based. Anselm's high qualities as a Churchman 
make it but the more likely that the charge was 
true. Himself incapable of overseeing the equipment 
of men-at-arms, he was the very man to be cheated 
grossly by those to whom he entrusted the task. 
The complaint with all it implied is but another 
illustration of the confusion into which Church 
and State had slipped. So long as Churchmen 
remained an integral part of the feudal system, 
holding high ofiice as liegemen of the king, owing 
the military and secular service which their office 
implied, the claim of the Church to choose its own 
dignitaries and in that choice to consider nothing 
except their spiritual qualifications was bound, if 
yielded absolutely, to weaken the State. The better 
Churchman a bishop was, the better saint and scholar, 
the better fitted to fulfil what the Church required 
from him, the less likely was he to be capable of ful- 
filling that side of his functions according to which 
he must be ready to aid his liege lord, in peace by 
counsel, in war by armed help. It is well to recognise 
that in this quarrel the whole right did not lie 
on the side of the Church. So long as Churchmen 
clung to the dignities in virtue of which they en- 
joyed the privilege of high position with the inevi- 
table condition of being required to fulfil certain 
civil functions, so long the State which had regard 
to its ovv^n self - preservation could not allow the 
question of fitness to fulfil those functions to be 



158 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

ignored in the election of the men who held the 
dignity. 

One thing however was certain about the summons 
to William's court, the archbishop would not receive 
justice. That bulwark of our modern justice, the 
independence of the judge upon his bench, was not 
yet known. The king's court literally belonged to the 
king, and in it the king, either in person or in the 
person of his nominee, presided. The judicial coui't of 
a Norman king was, as Palgrave expresses it, another 
name for the king's despotism. Rufus might think 
he now had the archbishop at his mercy. In a court 
of his own creation, on a plea which had to do with 
purely civil concerns, there could not possibly enter 
those side issues which had baffled all his earlier attacks, 
and there could be no verdict except one. 

Anselm saw the situation and was weary of the 
whole matter. His position had long been difficult, 
this last weight made the burden intolerable. He 
asked for leave to go to Rome. When 'the request was 
presented, William jeered at it with a jibe which 
unconsciously hid a compliment to the man he was 
tormenting. " Why should he wish to go to Rome ? 
He can have no sins which none but a pope can forgive. 
And if what he wants is advice. Urban is more likely to 
need Anselm's counsel, than Anselm Urban's." Anselm 
however was in no mood to be put aside with jests. 
When the request was refused at the Pentecost court of 
Windsor in 1097, he renewed it in August to be told 
that a petition of such gravity could not be determined 
ofF-hand by the king but must come before the great 
council of the realm. So the question between king 
and primate came before the court at Winchester 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 159 

October 1097. The king had silently let fall the 
complaint about the archbishop's contingent, and the 
issue was clear. 

Again the king refused Anselm's request, and added 
the warning that, if the demand were persisted in, he 
counted it suiEcient reason for taking possession of 
the property of the see. The archbishop summoned 
his suffragans in order to lay the case before them. 
Careful to avoid all appearance of a cabal, they 
informed the king of the request, but they came. 
Their primate began to speak of the duties which lay 
on himself and them as bishops of the Church of 
Christ. Thereupon Walchelin of Winchester in name 
of his brethren begged him to look at the question 
from their point of view. The primate was alone, a 
stranger, a monk, he could afford to regard everything 
from a peculiarly high standpoint. But they could not 
afford to do this. They had affairs of this world in 
which they were interested, friends and dependants 
who looked to them for support. In even the highest 
matters they could not afford to ignore these consider- 
ations. If the plea was urged in all seriousness, it is 
a proof of the low estate into which the episcopate in 
England had sunk. But one suspects that there was a 
touch of irony in it, which the monkish chronicler 
failed to see, and that Walchelin meant to suggest to 
his superior how a man loses foothold on the solid 
earth through the pursuit of phantoms. Anselm ac- 
cepted it literally. " Go," he said, " to your master, 
I will hold to my God." 

The court party had one strong ground against 
Anselm's claim in the ancient customs of the kino^dom. 
If the Primate of England without due cause shown 



i6o ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

could leave his post and compel the king to gi-ant a pass- 
port for resort to Rome, the customs were broken. Yet 
these time-honoured customs the archbishop had sworn 
to obey, when he made his compact with Ruf us. Anselm 
could not but acknowledge the fact, but he added that 
he had sworn obedience to those customs, so far as they 
were consistent with justice and with the will of God. 
No, said his opponents with one voice, the oath was 
absolute and was taken with no such reservations. 
Surely, the archbishop retorted, if such a reservation 
was not expressly stated, it was at least implied. Such 
a reservation is and must be implied in every oath. 
" No Christian man can bind himself to customs which 
are opposed to the divine law. It is, you say, contrary 
to those customs of your realm that for the salvation 
of my soul and the administration of the Church I 
should visit St. Peter in his successor. Such customs 
are against God and w^orthy of condemnation." 

That was something of an evasion. It was the 
business of the archbishop to have considered these 
things before he took the oath, and if he found the 
customs incompatible with what he regarded as his 
duty to have declined the oath. Anselm felt the 
difficulty of his position, for, seated in the king's 
presence, he proceeded to elaborate the question and to 
lay down the necessary limitations which attach to 
every oath. But the king and the barons broke in 
upon his statement. This, they cried, is no argument, 
it is a sermon. When the clamour died down, Anselm 
brought the whole question to an issue. "You wish 
me to swear never again to appeal to St. Peter or to 
his vicar. Such a demand no Christian ought ever to 
make. To take such an oath is to forswear St. Peter, 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER i6i 

and to forswear St. Peter is to forswear Christ, who 
made the apostle chief over His Church. When I deny 
Christ, I will readily pay the penalty in your court for 
demanding this license." 

The argument is unanswerable from Anselm's point 
of view and from that of all who share its implied 
conviction that the papal supremacy is of the essence 
of Christianity and therefore any interference with it 
touches conscience. Hold it to be an essential part of 
the law of Christ's Church on earth that each arch- 
bishop shall have free access to Rome and shall have 
the right to determine for what cause he shall go, and 
no oath will ever bind a Churchman to forego that right. 
His conscience would have violence done to it by mere 
earthly customs, if that were so. But hold that only a 
conscience which had been nurtured in the atmosphere 
of Aosta and Le Bee could ever have thus construed 
the essentials of Christianity, and then to set the 
surrender of the right of appeal to Rome on the same 
level as a denial of Christ will appear as one of the 
means through which the papal system confuses the 
moral issues of all questions and obscures the simplicities 
of Christ. 

The archbishop had been fully invested in his dignity. 
He had accepted his benefice on the terms which were 
then customary, the terms of becoming the king's liege 
man and doing him homage. He had been permitted 
to exercise his authority, since he had consecrated other 
bishops. Liberty had been granted him to accept his 
pallium from Pope Urban. What he now required was 
the recognition of a right which Lanfranc had never 
exercised, which the Conqueror had never admitted, but 
which the new claims of Rome were making appear 
II 



i62 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

essential. It was a legitimate claim that England 
must consider that demand before admitting it, and 
should, if it were found out of harmony with her law, 
declare null the compact by which the archbishop held 
his property. To be forced into admitting the claim 
by an appeal to the archbishop's conscience was im- 
possible. No one man's conscience can determine 
Enojlish law. 

Anselm based his demand on opinions about the 
papal authority which no one in the king's court 
was prepared to deny. Laymen and clergy alike 
granted the pope's authority over the Church and the 
consequent duty on the part of each archbishop to 
obey that authority. But the king also had his claims 
over the archbishop, and in recognition of these the 
primate had sworn to his oath of allegiance. Was 
Rome at liberty without consulting the king to insist 
upon new demands which conflicted with the terms of 
that oath, and was every bishop to be at liberty to 
set aside the king's claim by pleading that obedience to 
Rome involved a question of conscience, which he 
dared not without peril to his soul ignore ? In that 
case the liberties of all England and the obedience of 
all bishops to the civil power lay at the mercy of a 
foreign potentate, who without regard to England's 
interests might interfere materially with its prosperity 
and peace. It was with a wholesome sense of the 
independence of their island kingdom that all men in 
England now forsook their archbishop. At Rockingham 
they had supported him against the royal tyranny ; at 
Winchester they refused to support him in denying the 
royal rights. " Go then to the pope," cried Robert of 
Meulan, speaking for Rufus' cabinet ; " there remains to 



THE RUPTURE AT WINCHESTER 163 

us what we know." Since the compact of his oath was 
broken, the property of the see was forfeit to the 
Crown. 

Anselm turned to leave ; he was already on his way 
to Canterbury, when he bethought him of all which 
his decision involved. He returned, re-entered the 
royal court, and stood before Rufus. " I am going, my 
lord," he said. " Had I gone with your goodwill, I judge 
it had become you better and had better pleased all 
good folk. As matters have not gone thus, on your 
account I regret it, for myself I will bear it quietly, 
and in spite of it will not surrender my love for your 
soul's welfare. And as one who knows not when he 
may see you again I commend you to God, and alike as 
a spiritual father to his beloved son, as the archbishop 
to the king, I desire, if you reject it not, to give 
you God's blessing and my own." " And I," the king 
answered, " do not refuse thy blessing." Over Eufus' 
bent head Anselm made the sign of the cross. It was 
their last meeting, October 15 1097. 

For Anselm there remained the leave-taking with his 
monks. Anxiously he told them how he recognised 
that his was the easier task. Of late years matters 
had gone more pleasantly with them, because the arch- 
bishop had been present to stand between them and 
the king; but now the king would have them at his 
mercy and he would not spare. Yet they were no 
tyros in the school of Christ, and had long known that 
His school was one of trial. Let them but endure 
unto the end and so be saved. 

Taking scrip and staff from the altar, the arch- 
bishop made his way to Dover. Here a last wanton 
insult from the king awaited him. No sooner was the 



1 64 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

scene at Winchester over than Rufus seized the archi- 
episcopal revenues. He bade Anselm leave the kingdom 
but take nothing with him which belonged to it. " I 
have horses, clothing, books, does he mean these ? For 
the want of these will not prevent me from going even 
naked and barefooted to Rome." " I do not mean 
these things," was the curt reply. " Let him go on his 
way, and before he has left the kingdom he will learn 
my meaning." That meaning Anselm learned at Dover. 
The royal clerk, William of War el wast, was waiting 
there. He dined at the archbishop's table throughout 
the fortnight during which adverse winds made it 
impossible to cross the Channel. On the last day he 
presented himself on the beach, and in the king's name 
demanded liberty to search all the baggage. The 
cynical publicity of the insult was characteristic of 
Rufus. 



CHAPTER IX 

The First Exile and "Cur Deus Homo" 

Landing at Wissant in November 1097, Anselm with 
his two companions, Baldwin of Tournay and Eadmer, 
avoided the territory of Normandy which was in 
Rufus' power, and made his way southward by 
Flanders and the France of that period. Here his 
person was revered and his work known; he was 
welcomed in every town by crowds which thronged 
to greet the venerable archbishop. The fact that he 
had held his own against the redoubtable King of 
England lent their visitor a peculiar honour in the 
eyes of the burghers. There is no stronger foe to a 
despotism than a victim whom it has been able to 
harass but unable to crush. The very presence of the 
man must have sent new thoughts of liberty into the 
minds of those corporations which, already conscious 
of their power, were beginning to think how they 
might use it. Specially welcome was the visitor in 
the monasteries where the principles of reform and 
the canons of Clermont council found their support. 
The monks reverenced in him the defender of the 
Catholic faith and the champion of the liberties of 
the Church. It was an honour to the monastery 
of St. Bertin that he consecrated an altar there to 

165 



i66 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

St. Laurence, it was a pride to the citizens of St. 
Omer that their children received confirmation at his 
hands. 

From one religious house to another the pilgrim 
passed through Burgundy until Cluny was reached 
in safety. The monastery was the fountainhead of 
reform. Christmastide was spent in the society of 
Hugh, its famous abbot, who had numbered among his 
monks both Hildebrand and Urban, whom the former 
had sent as legate to Hungary and the latter still 
honoured with his confidence. Hugh remained abbot 
at Cluny ; there are men who prefer to inspire those 
who sit on thrones rather than be themselves hampered 
by the royal robes. From Cluny Anselm proceeded to 
Lyons. There, as archbishop of the city and ecclesias- 
tical leader of the present France, ruled another Hugh. 
Hildebrand on his deathbed had nominated this former 
fellow-monk at Cluny as one of his possible successors 
on the papal chair ; Victor had found it necessary to 
excommunicate him ; Urban had found it equally 
necessary to restore him. One of the clearest heads 
in the tangled Church politics of that century and one of 
the most uncompromising, he had long been acquainted 
by letter with Anselm, while the latter was abbot of 
Le Bee. The two men had learned to respect each 
the other's character. Hugh welcomed his friend 
heartily, and in return for the quondam abbot's in- 
struction in theology was able to initiate him into 
Church politics. 

The result must have been an unwelcome surprise to 
the gentle archbishop. In England the papal power 
had risen before him in beautiful vision ; in Lyons it 
appeared in its reality. The supreme pontiff, who 



THE FIRST EXILE 167 

ruled the Church for the ends of Christ and who gave 
speedy remedy to every wrong, gave place to the 
bishop of Rome holding uncertain footing in his own 
city, needing to veer with the change of circumstances, 
to attempt the possible rather than seek after the 
ideal, Hugh could show him things as they were. 
No one knew them better, the Rome in which the 
pope was never safe from insult, Northern Italy 
divided between his followers and those of the anti- 
pope. Southern Italy occupied by Normans w^ho, 
intent on carving out for themselves a kingdom, were 
prepared to sell their swords to the highest bidder, 
Germany racked by intestine feuds which Urban must 
alternately foment and allay. Anselm began to see 
that in escaping from England to Rome he had not 
fled from the whirl of earthly business for which he 
felt himself unfit, but had merely involved himself in 
it more hopelessly. In the hour of disillusionment he 
wrote to the pope : " In the archbishopric during my 
four years I have brought forth no fruit, but have 
lived uselessly in great and dreadful troubles of spirit, 
so that to-day I would rather choose to die beyond 
England than to live in it. For, if I should require 
to finish my life there in the way in which I was 
living it, I foresee rather the damnation than the 
salvation of my soul." Refraining with simple mag- 
nanimity from any railings against his enemies, he 
put the state of affairs in England from his own point 
of view, and recounted the mental and moral dis- 
abilities which made him despair of being ever able 
to bring matters to a good issue, and finally in 
justice to the office, to England, and to himself, he 
begged Urban to relieve him of the duties. The 



i68 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

answer was a distinct refusal and a summons to the 
imperial city. 

The journey to Rome was, however, no easy task. 
The supporters of the antipope Wibert had a strong 
grasp on the north of Italy, and to them the capture 
of this important adherent of Urban would have been 
peculiarly grateful. The troubles of the time had also 
let loose all the forces of disorder. Robber bands were 
frequent, and to them a Churchman was no more than 
an ill-defended prize. Yet there was no help for it. 
In March 1098 Anselm, already a man of sixty-four, 
set out to cross the Alps by the well-remembered 
route, along which he had once gone into the world to 
seek for truth. He was coming back in search of 
justice, now one of the most famous figures in the 
west of Europe, but with well-nigh the same scant; 
retinue. The Englishman Eadmer seems to have been 
charmed by the spice of adventure in the journey. 
His all too brief account of the episode gives a gracious 
idea of the cariiaraderie and innocent newsmongering 
which prevailed among the mediaeval monasteries. To 
Anselm and his brethren the convent was the neces- 
sary terminus of the day's travel, not only because it 
gave them a lodging for the night and their daily 
bread, but because it offered the opportunity of that 
daily divine service which their Benedictine rule en- 
joined, and which habit had made as necessary to them 
as their daily bread. To the brethren in the monastery 
the arrival of strangers on the way to Rome was an 
opportunity for exercising the grace of hospitality and 
a welcome chance of learning something from the 
outer world. 

Eadmer delightedly recounts how the abbot in one 



THE FIRST EXILE 169 

convent warned them not to go on because even the 
Archbishop of England had been obliged to turn back 
from Piacenza and v^as now living in Lyons, and how 
another, when he learned that some of his visitors had 
made their profession in Le Bee, asked eagerly how 
Anselm that man of God fared. That Anselm had 
become an archbishop the abbot knew, but counted of 
little importance. What he desired to learn was how 
his brother fared in the travail of this life, because for 
his part he prayed each day that it might be well with 
his spirit. Among the barbarous struggles of the 
time, in the country where Guelf and Ghibelline were 
soon to divide every city and often to forget in their 
feuds the very aims for which they fought, it is 
charming to catch a glimpse of this apostolic picture 
of a brotherhood in the one spirit. Not a little of 
the Christian life was maintained and transmitted 
across those centuries by the monasteries which did 
not count Guelf and Ghibelline of chief importance, 
and which prayed for each other's welfare in the 
Lord. 

On his arrival in Rome the archbishop was received 
with high honour. Rooms were set apart for him in 
the Lateran, where Urban then lived : the antipope 
still held the Castle of St. Angelo. The day after his 
coming he was received in solemn audience. A special 
seat was placed for him beside the pope's chair. He 
was acknowledged as the teacher from whom Urban 
as well as all Christendom might be proud to learn. 
But special praise was given to the humility which had 
prompted one who stood so high in position and attain- 
ments to recognise to the full Rome's claims. The 
higher Urban set his new guest, the higher stood the 



I70 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

honour of the chair of St. Peter to which even that 
guest bowed. There was policy as well as generosity 
in the warmth of the welcome. Urban never forgot in 
connection with Anselm that he was a useful pawn in 
the game of asserting his own position against anti- 
pope and emperor. But Rome gave no real help. It 
is true that the pope gave a formal hearing to the 
archbishop's complaint against Rufus, that he acknow- 
ledged its justice, and in terms of this new view 
of the situation wrote a letter to the King of Eng- 
land, bidding him restore Anselm to his dignities. 
What more could even Rome do at that time ? Urban 
was engrossed in his favourite scheme of the Cru- 
sade, and in the negotiations for the reunion of the 
Eastern and Western Churches which the Crusade had 
brought anew to the front. He recognised more clearly 
than Anselm's partisans could be expected to do the 
futility of launching an excommunication against 
Rufus. The King of England would not greatly care 
about any excommunication. He might go cheerily 
over to the acknowledgment of Wibert, or might 
resolve that England could do very well without any 
pope at all. An excommunication would have been 
the assertion of a great principle. But Urban was no 
Hildebrand, he did not realise the power over even 
the most indifferent which comes from the bold asser- 
tion of a principle. It would be futile, would bring 
Anselm no immediate advantage, might make more 
difficult the position of the pope. Accordingly the 
archbishop had to content himself with good words. 
Letters passed between Rome and England. The 
secretaries at the royal and papal courts were kept 
more busy. Eadmer suggests that money came out of 



THE FIRST EXILE 171 

England. Doubtless it did, though Urban had nothing 
to do with that. In any case nothing was done or 
could be done. And a chill sense of the impotence of 
Rome's support fell over Anselm. 

It chanced that a certain John, a native of Rome, 
had made his profession as monk in Le Bee. He had 
been summoned to his native city by the pope, and on 
giving proof of some strength of character and devo- 
tion, had been promoted by Urban to be abbot of the 
convent of San Salvator at Telese in Campania. Over- 
joyed at the opportunity of welcoming his former 
abbot, he eagerly invited Anselm to make his abode 
in the abbey. And, as the Roman summer was now 
approaching, and the heat was notoriously unwhole- 
some to strangers from the North, Urban saw in the 
request the manifest hand of God, who before this new 
Jacob had sent a Joseph to make ready a fitting place 
for his sojourn. The convent possessed a property, 
where a castle manned by " slaves " or " Slavs " in the 
pay of the Greek emperor had once stood. This Sclavia 
stood high among the hills east of Capua, where the 
Samnian Apennines break down to the sea. In it a lay 
brother of the convent lived and directed the work of 
the servants of the monastery. To this retreat Abbot 
John, who knew his old master's habits and tastes, 
offered to send Anselm. No sooner had he reached its 
peace and breathed its high pure air than his spirit 
revived. " This," he cried, " is my rest ; here will I 
dwell, for my delight is therein." 

And here throughout the summer far from Rome's 
doubly heated atmosphere the archbishop spent some 
of his happiest months. He cast off the yoke of 
office, dropped the burdensome forms which had never 



172 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

grown familiar to him, and became again in outward 
habit, what in heart he was to the end, a simple monk. 
He spent his summer " directing his attention day and 
night to the holy rites, to meditation on God, and to 
the elucidation of mystic truths." But it was not in 
his nature to content himself with a self-centred de- 
votion. He betook himself to the studies which the 
cares of an archbishopric had not dislodged from his 
affections, and completed a treatise which had been 
already begun during the busy years in England. Its 
preface with the note of how the volume was begun 
in sore travail of heart, in magna cordis trihulatione, 
is a sufficient indication how much more congenial to a 
man of his temperament was work of this nature and 
amid these surroundings than the task of governing 
a great primacy. The volume is the famous Cur Deus 
Homo, which has done as much to maintain his fame 
and to make his influence enduring in theology as the 
Proslogium has in speculative philosophy. 

The treatise is cast into the form of a dialogue, in 
which Boso Anselm's friend in the convent at Le Bee 
plays the part of advocatus diaholi, and brings forward 
objections to the Christian dogma, which his master 
seeks to answer. This form has helped to lighten the 
discussion, and the practical interest of the question 
with which it deals has made the treatise more popular 
and accessible to many whom the Proslogium would 
appal. The subject is not, as the title Cur Deus Homo 
suororests, a discussion of the Incarnation, but of the 
Atonement. And the theory which Anselm elaborated 
is, if not absolutely the first, certainly the first serious 
eifort on the part of the Church to bring the relation 
between the humiliation and passion of Jesus Christ 



THE FIRST EXILE 173 

and the remission of sins into the court of reason and 
conscience. 

The theory was of service in what it denied and 
made for ever impossible. Until Anselm's day the 
Church, so far as it held any specific dogma on the 
subject, generally believed and taught that the atone- 
ment of Christ was a ransom paid to the devil. Some 
who v/ere yet accounted theologians had not hesitated 
even to teach that Christ's body was merely the bait 
which was dangled before the devil, so that the enemy 
of souls, deceived by it, rushed on One whom he thus 
took to be no more than a man, inflicted on Him a death 
which was not His due, and was compelled in compen- 
sation for that injustice to remit all his claims on man- 
kind whose lives were justly forfeit to his power and 
malice. The theory, no doubt, owed its origin in part 
to the source of much mistaken teaching, the literal 
interpretation of a Scripture metaphor. But that a 
theory of this description was able to hold the field for 
many centuries is a proof of how the religious life of the 
Church can be satisfied with, and grow in spite of, 
hopelessly inadequate intellectual statements. Anselm 
found the statement offensive to reason and pernicious 
to conscience. He said so, and without examining it 
thoroughly thrust it contemptuously aside ; and by 
his action he vindicated the right of the Church to 
declare his statement equally open to objection and to 
set it aside in its turn. But the statement of the doc- 
trine in Cur Beus Homo succeeded in supplanting its 
predecessor less by its polemic than by the fact that it 
supplied a theory which could more adequately answer 
the religious need of its own time. 

It is noteworthy that what in the older theory ran 



174 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

counter to Anselm's whole method of thought was the 
dualism which it recognised in the government of the 
world. According to it, God needed to purchase from 
the devil the souls which He Himself had created. In 
his theological, as in his more strictly philosophical, 
works Anselm was boldly seeking to reach a higher 
unity which should combine the antinomies of the 
moral world. It must be acknowledged that here as 
well as there his success was not complete, for his 
own theory, while it denied and made for ever im- 
possible the idea of the dualism between the Divine 
nature and something outside it, transferred that to 
the Divine nature itself and set in an unbridged oppo- 
sition the justice and the mercy of God. 

Anselm then construes man's relation to God as that 
of a subordinate to his superior in the feudal hierarchy. 
Man is God's "homo" who owes his Lord a certain 
homage of service. But man has failed to render this 
homaofe, and has therefore hurt his Lord's honour. 
Sin is debt, a debt which is immeasurable, for it 
had been better that the whole finite world should 
have ceased to be than that the smallest sin should 
have been committed. Since now God's nature is one 
with absolute righteousness, this debt cannot be re- 
mitted by an arbitrary act of clemency on God's part. 
No such act of will can remit a demand which abso- 
lute righteousness claims to see fulfilled. 

There must therefore be satisfaction to the Divine 
honour, and this satisfaction must be as great as the 
debt has been grievous. The satisfaction might be 
found in endless punishment, but the result of this 
would be to thwart the Divine goodness and so the whole 
purpose of God in creating the world and man. The 



THE FIRST EXILE 175 

satisfaction must also be rendered by man, since man 
has committed the offence and incurred the debt. Yet 
no man can render due satisfaction, for the debt is 
practically infinite, and nothing which a finite being 
can render is commensurate with it. Besides man, if 
he be considered as a creature, has nothing to offer to 
God which is not already due by the creature to his 
Creator. A perfect service is all which man can 
render, and a perfect service is what each man already 
owes to Almighty God. 

The satisfaction must therefore be offered by one 
who, while man and therefore able to stand in man's 
place, is yet able to offer to God that which is of 
infinite value, and something which is not already 
due on his own part to God. In this light and from 
this point of view Anselm construes the Humiliation 
and the Passion. Christ, because He became man, 
became also able to render a deed and an obedience 
which could be offered for man. Because Christ was 
also God, what He wrought was of infinite worth. 
But Christ did not merely render a life of perfect 
obedience. That was no more than His due to God, 
so far as He had become man and submitted to man's 
limitations. Therefore He further surrendered Him- 
self to death, a death which was in no wise His 
due, since by no sin had He brought it on Himself. 
This deed, which is so great because of the character 
of Him who wrought it that it merits an infinite 
recognition, merited its reward from His Father. 
Since, however, there is nothing by which God can 
add to the blessedness of His Son, Christ surrenders 
the reward to His brother men. It becomes the store 
of infinite merit which makes their salvation possible. 



176 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

It is noteworthy in connection with the final sen- 
tences that Anselm nowhere, as later perverters of his 
doctrine have not hesitated to do, represents God as 
inflicting any punishment upon Christ. He lays 
peculiar emphasis on the voluntary character of 
Christ's suflferings, elaborately and with strained 
exegesis explains passages of Scripture which are 
tolerant of the opposite construction, and emphatic- 
ally states that Christ met His death at the hands 
of the Jews because of His steadfast adherence to 
righteousness. But while the theory was not open 
to the perversions which it has thus suffered in many 
popular adaptations, it certainly did set the passion 
apart from the humiliation, regarded the latter as 
necessary only to qualify Christ for conveying His 
benefits to men, and made the passion as passion to be 
that by which alone the redemption of man is wrought. 

The theory which Anselm framed has had a power- 
ful influence directly and indirectly, and its indirect 
influence can be traced even where its conclusions are re- 
fused a formal reception. When the Church has refused 
to accept that idea of Christ's salvation, it has often 
retained the conception of God's relation to men from 
which the other sprang and which it helped to con- 
firm. For the weakness of the whole position is the 
legality through which it construes all God's dealings 
with men. Sin is misunderstood when it is made 
synonymous with debt, and, since the obligations 
of conscience cannot be adequately represented as 
debt, since personal self -surrender is something es- 
sentially diflferent from and richer than the nice 
calculation of all that is due to God's honour, the 
theory fails to interpret and therefore to educate the 



THE FIRST EXILE 177 

moral nature, and fails even more completely to re- 
present the soul's hunger for the living God. I can 
transfer an obligation of the purse ; I cannot transfer 
an obligation of the conscience. If I try to do it, I 
only hurt the conscience. If I think I have succeeded, 
that is a sign of a blunted conscience. Another may 
pay the debt which a man has contracted, and the 
creditor will not too carefully ask whence comes the 
money which he gladly accepts. But no one can fulfil 
the obligation, the very essence of which is that it 
rests on one man's conscience, must be recognised in 
that man's life, and must be fulfilled, if at all, by that 
man's patience. 

Hence throughout the Cur Deus Homo the reader 
is cramped by the quantitative measures which Anselm 
applies to questions of morals. When he calculates 
the number of the redeemed which will be necessary 
and sufficient to make up for the number of the fallen 
angels, it is inevitable to remember that souls are 
hardly to be numbered like sheep. When he reckons 
the exact amount of satisfaction which will be required 
to make up for human transgression, it is a relief to 
realise that som.e things are beyond the power of the 
finest hair-balances. And when the infinite guilt which 
those who slew Christ brought upon themselves by 
their deed is spoken of as though it might possibly 
exhaust the infinite merit of the Saviour's death and 
thus leave nothing over which could be applied to the 
benefit of other souls, the impression deepens that a 
species of reckoning is introduced which in a region 
of this description is not at all at home, and the 
application of which can only produce confusion. 

It is the same externalism of relation between God 
12 



178 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

and man which weakens the theory as a representation 
of what Christ is to the human spirit. Its inevitable 
tendency is to empty forgiveness of its ethical and 
spiritual significance. All men are shut up to this 
condition of condemnation because of a debt which 
they cannot and will never be able to pay. Christ 
has paid that debt to the full. There cannot be any 
real forgiveness when a debt has been fully paid. 
There is consequently no real meaning in the Divine 
grace. The Divine grace has accepted payment, and is 
no more grace. Divine grace prompted the payment, 
but thus grace is removed from the act of forgiveness, 
where in reality the soul is most conscious of it. 
Christ, because He has paid that debt, has made sal- 
vation possible to all men. How then does any indi- 
vidual soul come to partake in the benefits of this 
salvation ? There remains nothing more than that 
the individual soul should come to understand the 
Divine arrangement, should recognise that this applies 
to itself, and should acquiesce in it. Faith accord- 
ingly becomes almost entirely an intellectual act of 
appreciation and acquiescence, and is emptied of most 
of its moral and spiritual content. 

The weight in the great work of redemption was 
thrown, not on the moral condition of the recipient 
who was tested by that appeal, and grew through his 
answer to it. The weight was thrown on the external 
application of an external help. The theory accord- 
ingly tended to make Christ outward and not inward, 
an arrangement made to satisfy the Divine require- 
ments. Now to externalise Christ is to externalise 
all the means of grace. Men who find it possible to 
think of Christ in these terms find it equally possible 



THE FIRST EXILE 179 

to conceive His grace as ministered through the con- 
tingencies of clerical orders and limited by the acci- 
dents of a formal ritual. To conceive of Christ as an 
arrangement is to lose sooner or later the spiritual 
sense of Sacrament and Church. Christ had wrought 
the great deed through which the store of merit was 
laid up on behalf of sinful mankind. The Church 
became the means through which the arrangement 
was intimated and by which the store was dispensed. 
The Church was present to minister the benefits of 
Christ to the souls of all who were within its reach. 
But the faith which appropriates Christ, the inward 
self-surrender through which Himself and the spirit 
who loves Him become one in aim and hope, and which 
thus becomes the source of a new moral and spiritual 
life, was more and more thrust into the background. 
Anselm's own religious life was fed from deeper 
springs than his theory recognised, but that does not 
make it the less true that his theory was one more 
influence which helped in time to materialise and 
externalise the mediaeval Church. 

This result has been inevitable from the ultimate 
principle of the theory. It offers no starting-point for 
the new moral life which springs out of living contact 
with Christ, and can offer no adequate explanation of 
the Christian facts of experience. On the theory, 
in order that the soul may receive the benefits of 
Christ's atoning work, there is no need of any moral 
relation to Christ. When the statement was accepted 
in a modified form by another school of theologians 
and transplanted into a very different soil, men sought 
to supply the needed point of attachment by gratitude. 
Because of all which Christ has wrought for man's 



i8o ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

salvation, and in thankful acknowledgment of all that 
has come and will come from His passion and death, 
the soul rises up to walk in newness of life. And 
when that life grows uncertain, the spirit turns back to 
remember what it has received, and to quicken its 
flagging zeal by the memory of its great debt. Yet 
this emotion is not the means through which the bene- 
fit is conveyed : it is the sign that the gift has already 
been accepted. It presupposes the benefit as already 
received, and for that very reason cannot become the 
channel of its reception. 

And further, the theory does not correspond to the 
religious facts. It ofiers an inaccurate and wholly 
inadequate idea of the relation between the soul of the 
Christian and his Redeemer. That relation is much 
richer in content than the idea of past deeds of tender- 
ness can ever convey. It is significant in this con- 
nection that Anselm the writer of Cur Deus Hotyio 
and Anselm the author of Prayers and Meditations 
are two. The theory as to redemption which he has 
elaborated in his treatise does not find any vital place 
in his Meditations. When he speaks and writes of the 
facts of the religious life in his own soul, he includes 
elements for which his theory cannot account, states 
conditions which that is compelled to ignore, recognises 
factors which have no right to be present. 

But there is one commanding thought which domin- 
ates the whole Cur Deus Homo, as it dominated the 
whole life of the author, and this w^as his most signifi- 
cant contribution to the question. To Anselm the wide 
universe with all it holds or ever will hold is nothing 
except the mirror in w^hich God manifests Himself. It 
has come into being and continues in being for no other 



THE FIRST EXILE i8i 

end save to represent the thought of Him who made it. 
Except so far as it does manifest God, it has neither 
meaning nor purpose. That is what makes it an 
ordered world — a cosmos and not a chaos. Because 
man is the crown of this creation, because in virtue of 
his being a rational intelligent creature he is that in 
which the otherwise unspoken purpose of this world 
comes to expression, his sin does not and cannot concern 
himself alone. It affects the whole world. It threatens 
to destroy its very purpose. It is in a real sense an 
effort to undo God's act in creation, because it threatens 
to undo the end which God had before Him when He 
created the world. This, to our mind, is Anselm's idea 
of the " honour of God." Sin would dethrone God, 
inasmuch as it threatens, in turning man aside from 
his true end, to pervert the whole purpose of God's 
world from what God Himself intended when He 
called it into being^. 

It is therefore impossible that God should pass by 
sin as though it were nothing. If He should do so, it 
would mean that He were content that His counsel 
should be thwarted. And God does not pass by sin. 
Since He has so far limited Himself as to permit a free 
will with all its awful privilege to exist alongside of 
His own. He can only assert His honour by punishment. 
Punishment to Anselm is not revenge, it is not even 
the means used for the improvement of the offender and 
justified by the resultant improvement in the offender. 
He has seen more deeply into it than that. Punish- 
ment is the assertion of God's purpose in an individual 
or a community which refuses to accept that purpose 
willingly, but which cannot remove itself outside the 
scope of the Divine decree, and which must therefore 



1 82 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

submit, however unwillingly, to that purpose. Further, 
God cannot accept back on its mere repentance the soul 
which has sinned. That He should do so seems to 
Anselm to mean that He puts this soul into the same 
position as though it had never sinned. He gives to 
that spirit as much as He could have given to the soul 
which had never departed from Him. That He should 
thus by an " arbitrary act of mercy " remit the penalty 
seems to Anselm to make possible the idea that the 
penalty was also arbitrary, and that the law of right- 
eousness is liable to change. There must be some 
satisfaction to this honour of God, some proof signal 
and awful that the law of righteousness was as un- 
changeable as God's being, and was in fact the very 
nature of God Himself. Man could not make such 
satisfaction. Anselm knew from his own experience 
and from the experience of the Church that Christ did. 
He knew the fact which, explain it how men will, is 
the core of the Church's sense of guilt and relief, that 
Christ and Christ only can relieve the conscience of its 
intolerable burden, and yet leave the moral law in all 
its unsullied majesty within the conscience. And the 
Church will ever owe a debt of gratitude to the man 
who with no forerunner along that dim and perilous 
way expressed this ultimate fact of its experience in so 
incisive a form that it could never again be ignored. 

Anselm spoke to his time in language which his time 
could understand. The idea of God as a moral governor, 
whose demands on men are as inevitable and as un- 
changeable as His being, was one which his age needed. 
The language in which it was expressed may be felt to 
be inadequate and even misleading, but it might have 
passed unheeded, if it had been otherwise expressed. 



THE FIRST EXILE 183 

And what is its final sense under any language was 
the truth which sustained the man's fine courage and 
indomitable patience. God was holy and, unless He 
ceased to be God, could not fail to require holiness alike 
from His subjects and His sons. It was the fresh 
recognition of that truth which was giving hundreds of 
men in Benedictine monasteries desire and courage to 
lay strong hands on their own lusts and discipline to 
finer issues their wayward and rebellious wills. It was 
the recognition of that truth which was nerving the 
better spirits of the mediaeval Church to speak and act 
for the ends of Christ. At the court of the brutal 
Rufus Anselm had stood, and he was yet to stand 
before the wily Beauclerk, in the name of One who was 
greater than they. Behind him was God. Above 
king and court and archbishop was the claim of that 
supreme law which no rebellion could ever alter and 
the penalties of which no neglect could hope to evade. 
God must be a strong tower or a rock of ofience. There 
were but the two alternatives, and men must choose. 

It was what those licentious, untamed barons needed 
to hear and see. It was the idea of God which they 
were capable of grasping. It was couched in language 
which even they could understand. Swift to exact 
their rights from those beneath them and jealous 
lest their honour should even in the smallest tittle be 
derogated from among their equals, they needed to be 
made to realise that there was One who would exact a 
like honour from them and who would exact it to the 
uttermost. He and He alone could f oreo^o the demands 
of His own justice. To God and not to the easily 
quieted conscience, to God and not to the easily stilled 
remorse of heart belongeth mercy. The very limit- 



1 84 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

ations of Anselm's statement may have aided the 
acceptance of his thought. He spoke in terms which 
his contemporaries could understand. The theory 
suited an age which conceived and could only conceive 
sin as the violation of an external law. 

An interesting historical parallel might be drawn in 
this respect between the thought of Anselm and that of 
Calvin. In an age which had rediscovered the desira- 
bility of the appetites and found little moral support 
or guidance in the outward forms of society, Calvin 
also stood forward to insist upon the decrees of God 
which are His eternal purpose. And to the Reformers 
as to Anselm the possibility of forgiveness and the 
reality of the Atonement became a burning question. 



CHAPTER X 

Councils of Bari and Rome 

In the late summer of 1098 the pope visited Southern 
Italy. Not the least of his many cares was the en- 
deavour to retain loyal to the holy see the Normans 
of that district. These had left their homes as pil- 
grims, but were well content with the Jerusalem which 
the south of Italy offered them. At one time they 
were caressed as the true defenders of the Church : 
among them Hildebrand secured peace to die. At 
another time they set up in the semi-Byzantine 
cathedral of Monreale near Palermo the figure of one 
of their kings crowned by the Redeemer, as the public 
sign that they required no recognition from the 
sovereign pontiff. Dangerous but necessary allies were 
the Southern Normans. 

Anselm, invited to accompany the pope, made another 
effort to be rid of his archbishopric. Whether the 
monastic life had wound itself anew about his heart, or 
his clearer understanding of the difficulties involved in 
the whole situation made him hopeless of obtaining any 
help from Rome, he begged Urban to relieve him from 
the burden. But Urban had learned to know the man 
better, and recognised that a vacancy in the see would 
be to the advantage of Ruf us. He meant to maintain 

185 



1 86 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

Anselm as a constant protest against the King of 
England's violation of ecclesiastical law and as a means 
of reopening the whole question when a more favour- 
able opportunity presented itself. The pope accord- 
ingly made a strong appeal to the primate's sense of 
self-sacrifice, and commanded him not to flinch from 
the post of duty. 

He further bade Anselm be present at a synod which 
was to be held at Bari on October 1, when the aftairs of 
England would be considered along with much other 
business. More than 180 bishops were convened in 
the Church of St. Nicholas on that day, and among 
them appeared delegates from the Eastern Church. 
The Crusade had caused a rapprochement between the 
court of Constantinople and the courts of the West, 
and the possibility of an alliance between the courts 
had made more desirable the healing of the schism be- 
tween the two branches of the Church. Urban was 
hopeful that he might use the Crusade to restore unity 
to the Church, and use both to strengthen his own posi- 
tion and crush his rival the antipope. At the council 
the Eastern bishops brought forward the difficulty their 
patriarch felt about acknowledging a Church which 
had added to the Nicene Creed and taught that the 
Holy Spirit proceeded both from Father and Son. 
The pope sought to justify his Church, but at last hard- 
pressed called on Anselm who had seated himself 
among the crowd of bishops to arise for the defence of 
the faith. The unknown, about whose identity the 
whispering bishops asked each other, stepped forward 
and proffered the argument which he later elaborated 
into a treatise, De Processione Spiritus Sancti contra 
Grwcos. 



COUNCILS OF BARI AND ROME 187 

The pamphlet is lucid and subtle but, it must be 
confessed, lacks vitality. In that respect it shares the 
fate of the whole discussion. The real questions which 
kept the Eastern and Western Churches apart were 
questions of practical politics and administration, on 
the ecclesiastical side the claim of Rome to be supreme 
over the Greek patriarch, on the political side the rela- 
tion between the rival emperors of Constantinople and 
the West. Each branch of the Church had had time 
and opportunity to develop an ethos of its own : each 
had developed a hierarchy which was jealous of its own 
dignity and incapable of appreciating any union which 
did not imply uniformity. When circumstances made 
it convenient for East and West to work together, the 
difference in dogma shrank into the background : when 
either section wished for other reasons to hold aloof 
from the other, the difference of dogma formed a con- 
venient pretext for breaking off negotiations. 

Anselm's treatise has the merit that it strove to lift 
the discussion to higher levels than those to which it 
frequently sank. The Greeks were in the habit of 
pressing their formal advantage, and of insisting that, 
whether legitimate or illegitimate in itself, the Jilioque 
was an unwarranted addition to the original Nicene 
Creed. The Romans sought to escape from the charge 
of innovation by showing that the clause was not an 
absolute novelty, but was implied at least in certain 
authoritative pronouncements from the early centuries, 
and taught by some among the Fathers whom both 
East and West recognised. The discussion frequently 
sank to that barren type which transforms theology 
into a branch of archaeology. Anselm however 
insisted that the Western addition, though it was not 



1 88 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

embodied in the Nicene formula, was implied in the 
Trinitarian dogma. It was the inevitable and necessary 
elaboration of what is already implied in the doctrine 
that the Son is homo-ousios or of the same nature as 
the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father, not 
so far as He is Father, but so far as He is God. But 
everything which can be predicated of the Father can 
equally be predicated of the Son, except that which is 
peculiar to the Father as Father. Since the Spirit pro- 
ceeds from the Father, so far as He is God and not so 
far as He is Father, the Spirit proceeds from that in 
the Divine nature which is common to the Father and 
the Son. He must therefore proceed from the Son 
also. The Father and the Son are one, not merely 
alike but one in essence. Whatever then can be pre- 
dicated of either of these, not in His separate relation as 
Father or as Son, but in the essence of the Godhead 
which is common to both, must be predicable of the 
other also. To teach otherwise is to obscure the 
identity which exists between Father and Son, to 
be homoiousian and not homo-ousian. The Greeks, 
Anselm insisted, had not thoroughly mastered the 
teaching of Athanasius, and were still involved, if 
not in the principles, at least in the consequences of 
the Arian heresy. 

At the close of the council Urban laid before the 
assembled bishops the position of Anselm, and after a 
review of affairs in England demanded the advice of 
his brethren. They gave it that, since the king had 
been sufficiently warned, the Church must now proceed 
to the final act of judgment and excommunicate its 
contumacious son. Urban expressed his agreement 
and his intention so to proceed. But Anselm threw him- 



COUNCILS OF BARI AND ROME 189 

self at the pope's feet and prayed for mercy. With 
apparent reluctance Urban consented to a further 
delay. The scene has an air of theatrical unreality. 
At that very time Urban knew that messengers were 
on their way from England with letters from Rufus. 
Till these arrived, it was impossible to tell whether the 
king was contumacious or not. To condemn a man for 
contumacy with his letters unread was an absurdity. 

The messengers reached Rome when Urban and 
Anselm had returned to the city for the winter. 
One announced that, while Ruf us had consented to read 
the pope's letter, he had not only refused to take any 
message from his archbishop, but had sworn that its 
monkish bearer must leave the kingdom immediately 
on peril of having his eyes torn out. Behind these 
came William of Warelwast with the royal answer. 
In a public audience Urban extracted from the envoy 
the admission that the king's sole ground of complaint 
against his archbishop was that the latter had insisted 
in defiance of the royal will on liberty to plead his 
cause at Rome. The pope bade the man note the 
absurdity of coming to Rome itself in order to present 
such a complaint. The imperturbable chaplain how- 
ever requested a private audience. He had money 
and influence enough to make friends for his master's 
cause about the person of the pope. William of 
Malmesbury declares roundly that the pope himself 
was bribed. The result at least was that, though now 
the contumacy was proved beyond a doubt, a delay 
for nine months was granted to Rufus. Anselm grew 
weary of seeing the confiscated revenues of his arch- 
bishopric used to pervert Roman justice. He asked 
leave to go, but was bid remain until the Easter synod. 



190 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

At this which was held in Rome and attended by 
one hundred and fift}^ bishops the chief questions 
dealt with referred to discipline. Several canons were 
passed to define the meaning of lay investiture. 
Anathema was pronounced against all laymen who 
gave stafi" and ring, against all clerics who received 
investiture at the hands of laymen, against all 
bishops consecrating clergy who accepted investiture 
from laymen. A like anathema was levelled against 
every man who in order to attain a spiritual 
office did homage to a layman. " It was," so Eadmer 
represents Urban to have said, " a thing execrable 
to see hands which are summoned to a supreme 
honour such as even the angels themselves do not 
share, the honour of creating by their ministrations 
God the Creator of all things in order to present 
Him as a sacrifice before God the Father for the 
redemption and salvation of all the world, reduced to 
the degradation of becoming the slaves of hands which 
night and day are defiled by impurity and rapine 
and are dipped in blood." It might be as the pope 
averred, but it was what Anselm and every bishop in 
England had done without hesitation and without 
scruple. Apart from that stupendous claim for the 
clergy, the Church could not expect the State to sur- 
render homage without a severe struggle. The form 
by which the bishop became the king's man was of 
slight importance, the fact was too important to be 
lightly given up. If the bishops were to continue to 
be great lords, they must continue to acknowledge the 
duties which their lordship implied. An immunity of 
this character meant the introduction of confusion into 
every kingdom. The only logical result was that, if 



COUNCILS OF BARI AND ROME 191 

the bishops desired to be free from the obligations 
implied in homage, they must give up the privileges 
which made them liable to those obligations. They 
must surrender their estates and their high civil 
functions. If they were unwilling to do this, they 
could not, because they were Churchmen, legislate 
themselves out of the just payment of the duties which 
their privileges required from them. 

The council was marked by a dramatic incident. 
The sittings were held in the Church of St. Peter. 
Since the church was open to the pilgrims who went 
and came to the grave of the chief apostle, it was 
dijBBcult for anyone who read the canons before the 
assembly for their confirmation to make his voice 
heard by all. A certain Reinger, bishop of Lucca, 
who possessed a clear ringing voice was selected to 
read from the ambo. Hardly however had he gone 
far before he stopped short, and, when men startled 
by the silence looked up, burst out : " What are we 
doing here ? We are laying laws on the compliant, 
and failing to resist the rebellious. To this place come 
the complaints of the distressed : from this as supreme 
head counsel and help are expected. Yet all the world 
sees the result. One sits among us, who has come 
from the world's end, patient, meek, silent. But his very 
silence is his loudest outcry. . . . This one, I repeat, 
has come hither under the burden of a cruel wrong, 
to seek justice from the apostolic see. He has been 
two years here, and what succour has he found ? If 
you do not all know whom I mean, I mean Anselm, 
archbishop of England." Those were days when men 
counted themselves not the less loyal to the Roman 
see, though they spoke about its failure in duty. 



192 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

There was no conspiracy of silence then. Reinger's 
staif fell ringing on the pavement, his breath panted 
under his vehement outburst. " Brother," said the 
pope, " it is enough. We shall take heed to this 
matter." Reinger was not yet content. " Good need 
is there that heed be given. Else must we remember 
that there is a higher tribunal which shall judge even 
our judgment." 

On the following day, Eadmer adds with unconscious 
irony, " having obtained permission we left Rome, and 
we received no more of counsel or of justice through 
the Roman bishop than I have mentioned." The visit 
to Rome had been a disappointment to Anselm and his 
friends. He had not been permitted to retire from 
office, nor received such a measure of support in it as 
would have spared him the necessity of taking a 
vigorous part himself. 

Returning to Lyons, Anselm was received with high 
honour. Hugh was not unwilling to entrust some of 
the cares of his archdiocese to a man whom he could 
wholly trust. No great fete-day was counted complete 
without the stranger's presence. No church could be 
duly consecrated without his benediction. Especially 
did many throng to receive his instructions for their 
confirmation. The man had the rare gift of speaking 
with entire sincerity on religious truths. And the 
work appealed to him, for, Eadmer states, though 
we who assisted him were wearied to death by the 
duty, he was never more content than when he was 
busied about the task of strengthening the souls of 
men. 

Inevitably in that age the idea of miraculous power 
gathered round the figure of the saintly archbishop. 



COUNCILS OF BARI AND ROME 193 

Men believed he was nearer the Source of all health 
both to body and soul than they. One illustration 
will suffice to show the popular belief and Anselm's 
attitude to it. Two men, knights and gentlemen, 
whose appearance showed them to be the victims of 
low fever, arrived one day when the archbishop was 
at table. Coming before him they begged a crust 
from his hands. Anselm, who saw from their dress 
that their request did not arise from poverty and who 
suspected their real design, refused the crust but 
invited them to take their places at the table. One 
of the monks however, who had more compassion or 
fewer scruples, handed them a fragment which his 
master's hand had already touched. They accepted 
it, and after the meal drew Eadmer aside, and asked 
him to help them in their desire to receive the sacra- 
ment at Mass from the hands of the saint. " We 
desire it in order that we may be freed from intolerable 
bodily pains which we suffer. It may be however that 
this bread will relieve us. If so we shall not come to 
the Mass. And our absence will be a sign to you that 
we are already cured." Eadmer promised to obtain for 
them what they wished, but when they did not appear 
concluded that the table crust had procured the desired 
effect. The archbishop believed as simply as every 
man in his period did that miraculous power might 
be bestowed on any true servant of God. He could 
be no stranger to the fact that men regarded him 
as possessed of such power, but he was too unspar- 
ing a student of his own heart not to realise the 
danger of spiritual pride which the belief in his own 
endowment with it was liable to foster in the heart 
of every man, and he was further of too spiritual a 
13 



194 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

vision not to see the dangers which attend a craving 
after the sensational and the wonderful. He realised the 
risk of superstition, when men sought the sacrament 
to be cured from ague, and when the ague was cured 
went home without the sacrament. While other men 
recounted tales about his unconscious deeds, he gravely 
discouraged all speech concerning them. 

In works of mercy and duty and in the composition 
of another treatise, De ConceptioneVirginali et Feccato 
Originali, the months of exile wore away. But, while 
all was quiet in Lyons, events were following fast on 
each other outside. On the 29th of July 1099 Urban 
died, within a fortnight of the fall of Jerusalem which 
he had done so much to free and of the recovery 
of which he was not to hear. On August 13 the 
conclave appointed a former monk of Cluny, whom 
Hildebrand had made a cardinal, to be Pope Paschal ii. 
When Rufus heard the news of Urban's death, " God's 
hate," he said, " fall on him who cares. But what 
sort of man is his successor ? " "A man not unlike 
Anselm," he was told. " By the face of God then he is 
of no use. But he may look to his own business. His 
popedom will not get the better of me. I am free 
now and mean to keep my freedom." He used the 
opportunity to make one effort at treating with 
Anselm without the intervention of Rome, but the 
terms he offered were trifling. Anselm was compelled 
to refuse them and to write a long^ letter to Paschal 
in which he stated his case anew and requested that 
he might not be sent back to England, unless he were 
empowered to demand new terms from the king. 

There was however to be another solution to the 
quarrel between these two than any which Rome could 



COUNCILS OF BARI AND ROME 195 

supply. The Church in England had begun to look 
upon their king as fey. His oppression continued 
and even increased. He held in his power three 
vacant bishoprics and about twelve abbeys, he spent 
their revenues on his own ends. Men through very 
custom or through a superstitious dread had ceased to 
remonstrate, for a supernatural success appeared to 
attend the king. It was as though he could not fail. 
Once he was about to start on an expedition in 
England, when news reached him of troubles in Maine. 
He turned his horse, rode straight to the coast and 
bade some fishermen put to sea in the teeth of a 
Channel gale. They urged the danger, but Rufus 
cursed them in all lightness of heart and bade them 
call to mind whether they had ever heard of a king 
who was drowned. Even the sea became his servant, 
for no sooner had the boat been fairly pushed off 
than the wind changed. It was, Eadmer wrote, as 
though God desired to prove him. When the king rose 
from his sickbed near the beginning of the reign, he 
had sworn that God should never make him good by 
the evil He had given, and now God would prove 
whether limitless good could move him. 

The accounts of the king's last years leave the 
curious impression that Rufus' arrogant blasphemy 
imposed on the imagination of his subjects until men 
watched with awe this drama of a struggle between 
the Almighty and one man's soul. The tension of 
their awe betrayed itself in the presages of the king's 
death which ran from lip to lip. In the monastery 
of St. Alban's which he had wantonly robbed a monk 
saw Anselm along with many English saints stand 
before the throne of God. All accused the king of 



196 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

many wrongs done to Holy Church. The Almighty 
addressed St. Alban, " Come nigh, thou glorious proto- 
martyr of the English, avenge the saints of England, 
whom a tyrant outrages." Thereon an arrow was 
handed to the saint. He flung it down. " Take, O 
Satan, all power over King William." 

On August 2 1100 the king was found with an 
arrow through his breast in the New Forest which 
had been his father's pride and his people's hate, and 
which had already proved so fatal to his race. The 
Saxon chronicler with a grave reticent simplicity is 
content to say, " He died in the midst of his unright- 
eousness without repentance and without restitution." 
Lascivious, brutal, blasphemous, knowing no law 
higher than his own appetites he too helped to make 
England. Without his dominant personality and 
stubborn will the Heptarchy might have returned, a 
Heptarchy of Norman nobles. 

The news was brought to Anselm at Chaise Dieu 
not far from Lj'ons. The monks wondered when they 
saw the grave face, to which the dead man had 
brought many heavy cares, bow between their master's 
hands. He burst into tears and to their unexpressed 
wonder o-ave answer, " I would rather have died 
mj^self than that the king should have passed as he 
has done." 



CHAPTEE XI 

THE INVESTITURE QUESTION — ANSELM AND BEAUCLERK 

England was saved from confusion through the 
prompt action of Henry, the youngest son of the 
Conqueror. Beauclerk had learned in the school of 
experience to bide his time ; he had also learned that 
when a man's opportunity has come he dare not wait 
to make up his mind about how he means to grasp it. 
Leaving others to bury his brother's body, he rode 
hard to Winchester and made himself master of the 
royal treasury. Yet he did not ride so hard but that 
William of Breteuil was in time to enter a protest on 
behalf of Robert, Duke of Normandy, then absent on 
crusading and matrimonial business. The protest 
served to quicken proceedings. Those of the barons 
of England who were present forthwith met in Witan 
and proclaimed Henry their elect lord. Within three 
days of Rufus' death the new king w^as consecrated to 
his office by Maurice, bishop of London. Yet the 
coronation, rapid though it was, was not effected before 
the king had pledged himself in a definite charter to 
undo the lawlessness of the last reign and restore the 
excellent customs of the Confessor. With equal 
emphasis Henry promised to restore liberty to the 
Church. The sense in which this liberty was under- 

197 



198 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

stood could be gathered from the specific pledge, that 
vacancies of bishoprics and abbacies were no longer to 
be artificially prolonged in order that the king might 
enjoy their revenues. 

Two of the earliest acts of the government showed 
the change which had come over afiairs. Ranulf the 
Flambard, who had become bishop of Durham, whom 
men accounted the secret instigator and instrument of 
Rufus' worst acts of oppression, and whom Anselm in 
a rare lapse of temper called " that publican of the 
publicans," was stripped of all his offices and cast into 
the Tower. And before the coronation William Gifiard 
was nominated to the vacant see of Winchester ; now 
Gifiard was above even the suspicion of simony. 

These things promised well. Men noted however 
that the latest of the Norman kings, those mighty 
hunters before the Lord, held firmly to the hated forest- 
laws : they were soon to learn that, while the coarse 
tyranny exercised toward the clergy was at an end, 
the king's idea of the Church's legitimate liberty was 
not that of Rome. Beauclerk was no bully like his 
brother, nor did he merely hunger after the Church's 
revenues, but he was not the man to surrender a single 
prerogative of his crown. Disciplined in the school of 
misfortune, he had learned tenacity and the control of 
his passions. None the less was he the son of the 
Conqueror. Prudent, cunning, ambitious, he could 
temporise but only in order to avoid a surrender. He 
could play the barons against each other and the 
English folk against them all. The power of the 
Church, through its moral influence over the minds of 
men and its centralised organisation served by the 
best intelligence of the time, had not escaped one of the 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 199 

acutest brains of that generation. Though his own 
Churchmanship was of the politic sort more than that 
of one who was personally devout, he was too shrewd 
a man placed in too difficult circumstances to throw 
so powerful an organisation into opposition; but he 
was quite as resolved as his father " to have all the 
croziers of England in his own hand." 

There was need for all the new king's prudence. 
The Norman kingship was too young to have become 
consecrated by custom. The individual was still more 
than the institution, needing to uphold it almost as 
much as he was upheld by it. Each new possessor of 
the dignity must prove himself fit to reign, before men 
submitted to him. Robert too was on his way home, 
with the glory won at the Crusades to aid him, with a 
wealthy bride to supply funds. The Conqueror's eldest 
son had never willingly submitted to the decision which 
shut him out from the throne of England. It seemed 
injustice that so fair a heritage should be denied to the 
firstborn, and he meant to try a fall with his brother 
before he acquiesced. Nor did Robert lack supporters 
among the English barons. Some favoured him be- 
cause they hoped for the license their friends in Nor- 
mandy enjoyed under the easy duke, others invited 
him because they possessed in addition to their English 
property fiefs across the Channel. The latter reason 
long made it difficult for two rulers to hold England 
and Normandy, and was to become one cause which 
impelled Beauclerk himself to Tinchebray ; at present 
it brought his brother into his new dominion. 

One of the king's earliest acts was to summon 
Anselm. A letter arrived at Lyons, in which the 
archbishop was begged to hasten his return. It con- 



200 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

tained the assurance that only necessity of State had 
compelled the king to accept consecration from any 
other hand than his primate's, and that from this 
time Anselm's counsel should receive its due weight. 
Money to pay the traveller's expenses and debts would 
have been sent with the letter, had not the condition of 
Normandy made its transit insecure. For that reason 
the archbishop was advised to avoid the duchy and sail 
from Wissant. Messengers would bring money to 
Dover, and meantime the revenues of the see were 
at his command. 

Anselm made such good speed that he landed at 
Dover on September 23. The two chief causes of his 
quarrel with Rufus were tacitly decided by the terms 
in which he was invited to return. There was to be 
no more filching of the archiepiscopal property for 
royal uses, and the Church in England received the 
right to hold free intercourse with the papal see. In 
the view of Englishmen and even of most English 
Churchmen it seemed that there was no ground for 
further quarrel. 

Not long after Anselm's landing king and primate 
met at Salisbury. Beauclerk, after repeating his re- 
gret that the Archbishop of Canterbury had not been 
present to give the consecration, requested Anselm to 
do him homage for title, rights, and lands as he had 
done it to his brother. It has been said that this was 
a novel demand, for which there was no ground in 
English constitutional law. But, since Anselm did not 
repel the request on the ground of its novelty, the 
question in this connection is purely academic and may 
be left for experts in Norman legal procedure to de- 
termine. Although the demand was an unusual one, 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 201 

circumstances made it appear advisable. The king 
was uncertain which men within his realm he could 
trust. Not all his nobles were loyal to him, and he 
required the greatest and most independent of them 
all to set an example of loyal support to the rest. 
The request Tnay have been exceptional, but so were 
the circumstances. 

Anselm promptly but firmly refused. He stated 
the canons which Rome had laid down on the subject 
for the government of the Church. His objection was 
not against doing homage to Beauclerk, but against 
doing homage to any king. He had been present at, 
and had taken part in the decisions of councils which 
declared that anyone who offered homage or who 
accepted investiture from lay hands was excommuni- 
cate. That was the simple and sufficient reason why 
he could not do to Henry what he had done to his 
brother. Let the king clearly understand the situa- 
tion. On no other terms than these could he consent 
to remain within the realm. If Henry was not pre- 
pared to submit to them, the primate must withdraw 
from the kingdom. Primarily the question between 
king and archbishop was that of homage. Anselm was 
required to render homage, not to accept investiture. 
But the other question was sure to emerge, so soon as 
the king invested a new bishop with staff and ring 
and sent him to the archbishop for consecration. If 
Anselm consecrated such a bishop, he made himself 
liable to Church censure. The two questions were 
inevitably bound up together, and the primate pre- 
ferred to raise them both. 

King and counsellors were startled by this state- 
ment, and, when it is remembered that the Church 



202 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

in England had been practically cut off from Rome 
during Anselm's three years of exile, it is easy to 
understand why the decision took them by surprise. 
This was a wholly new claim. All that the archbishop 
had demanded from Rufus had been freely granted by 
his successor, and the result was that the homage 
which the archbishop rendered to Rufus was refused 
to his successor. Henry however soon regained con- 
trol of the situation, and asked that the whole matter 
might be hung up till Easter. Meantime he pro- 
mised to despatch a messenger to the pope, to learn 
the exact scope of this new demand, to explain how it 
clashed with all the customs of England, and to inquire 
whether in the present position of aifairs in the king- 
dom it could not be modified. There is no reason to 
suspect Henry's sincerity in making this request. His 
desire to avoid a quarrel with Anselm at this time 
may have been partly due to the wish not to lose the 
primate's moral support, but to say this is only to say 
that he tried to fulfil his duty to England. To anyone, 
however, who does not count it wickedness that any 
king measured the Church's claims before he granted 
them, the king's embarrassment before the unexpected 
situation and his sincere and unselfish admiration for 
the character of his great prelate are equally patent. 

Anselm had no hesitation in consenting to a delay. 
He had no doubt as to the answer which would come 
back from Rome. He had gauged the vital importance 
of the whole question, and had had occasion to judge 
the temper of Rome in connection with it. There was 
little likelihood that the pope would resile from the 
position he had deliberately taken. But the primate 
knew the difficulty of Henrj^'s position in England, and 



I 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 203 

though no Englishman he was too true a patriot to 
his adopted country to make capital for his see out of 
the political perplexities of the court at the risk of 
making civil war possible in England. 

The terms of a truce were arranged. Anselm should 
receive and administer his see with all the revenues 
accruing to it as freely as had been the case in the days 
of Lanfranc. The king should appoint and invest 
bishops to vacant sees. But while the archbishop was 
not to be required to consecrate the bishops who re- 
ceived investiture from the king, he was not to refuse 
his communion to them nor to treat them as ipso 
facto excommunicate. If the answer from Rome were 
unfavourable to the royal wishes, Anselm 's position 
would be unprejudiced. 

During the period of truce events marched rapidly, 
and Anselm had the opportunity to show his sagacious 
loyalty alike to his king and to the best interests 
of his adopted country. The uncertain allegiance of 
the Norman nobles had a result which affected pro- 
foundly the fate of England. It threw Henry back 
on the support of the English people. Already the 
fact that their new king was English -born had ap- 
pealed to the singular pride of the insular race. The 
other sons of the Conqueror had been aliens to the 
land, and were born to their father while he was 
no more than Duke of Normandy. This one had first 
seen the light under an English sky, when his father 
was already King of England. Henry porphyrogeni- 
tus was quick to see his advantage in the fact, and 
sought to confirm his position by marrying Edith, the 
daughter of Malcolm of Scotland and Margaret grand- 
niece of Edward the Confessor. The marriag-e was sure 



204 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

to win the affection of the Saxons, who looked back 
with foolish fondness to their last native king: it 
would also define the king's future policy. But a grave 
dijQ&culty stood in the way. Edith had been trusted 
for her education to the care of an aunt Christina, 
abbess of Romsey in Hampshire. While the girl lived 
in the convent the abbess had compelled her to wear 
the veil in order to shield her from the insults of a 
wanton court. There is a story of how Rufus once 
found his way to the convent and went into its church 
to say his prayers there. But the superior evidently 
suspected her king's devotion, for she at once hunied 
awa}^ to throw a veil over her dangerously beautiful 
niece. Already however Rufus had penetrated into 
the cloister and was enjoying the fresh scent of " the 
roses and lilies of its garden." It is a little difficult to 
realise Rufus walking in a nunnery garden and smelling 
lilies, but one cannot doubt that the abbess knew the 
character of her kinsmen, and the prompt action which 
resulted from the knowledge throws a somewhat ugly 
sidelight on the much vaunted chivalry of the century. 
Malcolm had had no intention that his daughter should 
" enter religion." He had very different intentions 
about her future. Once when he found her wearing 
the veil on the occasion of a visit to the convent, he had 
torn the emblem from her head. Edith herself averred 
that the dress had been forced on her by dint of hard 
words and harder blows from her aunt. Whenever 
she found herself unwatched, she had not hesitated to 
tear the hated symbol and trample it under her young 
and petulant feet. Yet the fact remained that she had 
been seen veiled in the convent, and in those early 
years in England no consecration service was counted 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 205 

necessary at the cloistering of virgins. That a girl 
wore the veil was enough in the eyes of men to make her 
an oblate. It threatened therefore to cause a grave 
scandal if the king signalised his accession by making 
his wife one who was already accounted a bride of 
Christ. 

The question was laid before the archbishop for his 
decision. He resolved it with the rare and simple 
courage which was characteristic of the man. If this 
thing were to be done, it should not be done in a corner, 
nor should it be effected by means of a papal dis- 
pensation with its suggestion of a large mulct paid 
for compliance, which left on men the hurtful im- 
pression that many of the ecclesiastical regulations were 
nothing more than means for the extortion of money. 
Anselm summoned a council of Churchmen and 
laymen to Lambeth and laid the case before them. 
Commissioners were sent to the convent who con- 
firmed the truth of all Edith's assertions. The 
archbishop himself reminded the council that a 
precedent could be found in the days of Lanfranc, 
for that prelate had released from their vows a large 
number of Anglo-Saxon women who in the days of 
violence and blood after the Conquest had taken 
shelter within the convent walls, but who desired in 
later years to return to their duties in the world. If 
women who of their own choice had taken the vows 
could be released, much more could one who had worn 
the veil against her will. Left alone to arrive at their 
decision, the counsellors decided for Edith's liberty. 
Anselm returned to make himself jointly responsible 
for the resolution, declared his entire concurrence with 
their sentence, and refused Edith's offer to submit to 



2o6 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

any ordeal by which the truth of her statements might 
be tested. 

And finally the archbishop declared the whole course 
of proceedings before an assembled throng at West- 
minster and called upon any who doubted its legality 
even now to interfere. When none spoke, he married 
Edith to King Henry on November 11 1100. He 
gave England its good Queen Maud, and won for 
himself a loyal and lifelong friend. The archbishop's 
action gave umbrage to the stricter party among the 
clergy, for John of Salisbury who wrote his Life in 
order to secure Anselm's canonisation carefully sup- 
presses the whole incident. Nor was it a welcome 
thing for the insolent Normans to bend before a 
daughter of the conquered race. They sneered to the 
end at the royal pair and named them Godric and 
Godgifu, goodman and goody. But the marriage won 
for Henry a warmer place in the hearts of the English, 
and the English axes held the kingdom for him. 

There was need, for Robert was now home from 
his crusading. The Flambard had made his escape 
from the Tower and joined him. Many were follow- 
ing that example, and more were only waiting for 
an opportunity to do the like. The Norman duke 
crossed the Channel and effected a landing. It is 
unnecessary to detail the negotiations, for matters 
never came to battle. The brothers seem to have been 
afraid to venture on the final push of pike. The king 
and duke met at Winchester; and Robert, having 
received the promise of an annual subsidy of 3000 
silver marks, went home to spend it. But in the 
matter Anselm's character was of prime value in 
bringing about an arrangement between Henry and 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 207 

his subjects. Not only was his loyalty to the king of 
great moral weight, but the trust men reposed in his 
honour made him an invaluable negotiator between 
the mutually distrustful parties. Eadmer says bluntly 
that Anselm saved the crown to the king, and though 
no other puts the matter with the same force, there can 
be little doubt that Henry gained considerable support 
from the undeviating loyalty of his archbishop. 

These events and the failure of Henry's messenger 
to return at Easter had delayed, but between two 
such opponents could only delay, the ecclesiastical 
question. For those who had now met were men fully 
capable of realising the magnitude of the debate in 
which not they alone but Christian Europe was en- 
gaged. To speak of Beauclerk as having shown 
ingratitude to his archbishop because he did not 
acknowledge a personal obligation by the surrender 
of a constitutional prerogative of his Crown is to mis- 
understand the two men and the issue before them. 
The debate was one on State policy. Nor was this 
the method of settlement which Anselm desired. His 
desire was that the relation of primate to king, of 
Church to State should be put upon a definite legal 
basis which would free the Church from the arbitrary 
encroachments or the embarrassing aid of any king. 
Gently but patiently he pursued that end. The scope 
of the question grew upon him, till he is found writing 
to the new king of Jerusalem that there was nothing 
God so loved on earth as the liberty of His Church. 
His past seven years of work in England had convinced 
him of the hopelessness of any good relations between 
king and archbishop, so long as everything depended 
on the will of an individual. He asked therefore for 



2o8 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

no personal consideration but the dispassionate settle- 
ment of a question of constitutional law. And Henry 
so treated it. He did not always maintain his self- 
control, nor did he always display the same Christian 
courtesy which Anselm showed to him, but it would 
be the heaviest indictment one could lay against the 
Church in any period, that Churchmen were inferior 
to laymen in methods of controversy. 

In the end of the year the envoys arrived with 
Paschal's reply. Behind its phrases of goodwill to the 
king and its lengthy citations from Holy Scripture 
and from the past contendings of emperors and bishops 
rested the fact that on one point the popes refused to 
yield. On investiture Rome did not mean to give way : 
on homage the letter discreetly said nothing. The 
pope was further careful to avoid the immediate ques- 
tion as to how king and archbishop in England were 
to act towards each other. Paschal had no desire to 
quarrel with Henry, he could not forego the support 
of England's allegiance, even the material support of 
Peter's pence. Henry was as little inclined to break 
with Rome, since an open breach would have made 
more difficult his present difficult situation. Both sides 
therefore confined themselves to generalities. 

Anselm was summoned to the court, and on his 
arrival was asked what he meant to do. He replied 
by an appeal to the canons of the councils in which he 
had taken part. The pope's letter had confirmed his 
opinion as to their meaning. Were he to disobey 
those decisions, he would in that very act be rendering 
himself excommunicate ; and he did not mean to cut 
himself ofi" from the Church. " I have nothing to do 
with those questions," the king answered ; " what I 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 209 

have to do with is that I will not lose the customs of 
my predecessors, nor tolerate within this realm any- 
one who is not man of mine." " I understand the 
issue," replied the archbishop. " But I do not mean to 
leave the realm. I shall go down to my church and 
diocese and while doing my duty there shall leave 
you to determine whether you mean to do violence 
to me or mine." The discussion was evidently half- 
hearted. Each party was too clear-sighted not to 
see the hopeless opposition between their rival prin- 
ciples. Neither was yet prepared to yield anything to 
the other, but both were unwilling to take action by 
prosecution or excommunication. Anselm wished, if a 
rupture did take place, to throw the onus of attack on 
the king, and the king realised the disadvantage his 
cause would suffer if he openly attacked a man whom 
he and his whole kingdom held in high esteem. 

For a time a breach seemed imminent; but Henry 
was too prudent to have two troubles on his hands at 
once, and at this time the Earl of Shrewsbury was 
suspected of fomenting disturbances in the West of 
England. There were the usual messages between 
court and prelate, blustering on the one side, calmly self- 
restrained on the other. There were the usual lengthy 
diplomatic interlocutors which led to nothing. But 
when it became evident that war could not be avoided 
in the West the king proposed the despatch of another 
embassy, more honourable and better instructed, to 
Rome. Anselm consented: two monks, Baldwin and 
Alexander, from the Christ Church convent were sent 
to represent the archbishop, while Henry was re- 
presented by Gerard, archbishop of York, Herbert, 
bishop of Norwich, and Robert, bishop of Chester. 
14 



2IO ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

The king was no sooner free from the ecclesiastical 
difficulty than he turned to crush Robert of Belesme, 
and in one swift campaign drove the earl into exile, 
and proved to England once for all that it had found 
its master. Not without reason did Orderic with 
a reminiscence of classical erudition introduce the 
genius of England as addressing Henry after his 
victory. " Rejoice, O king, and render thanks to God 
the Lord for this, that thou hast now begun to be a free 
kinof, since thou hast overthrown Robert of Belesme 
and driven him beyond thy realm." The English 
people whom Henry had trusted had not failed him in 
two issues : henceforth his crown was secure. 

At a great council held in London 1102 the question 
of the Church came to be considered. The messengers 
had returned from Rome, and the king demanded that 
Anselm should now do him right in the debate between 
them. The archbishop claimed that the letter which 
the envoys had brought back to the king be read, and 
showed to all a letter from Paschal which justified 
him in the attitude he had assumed. Henry however 
refused to make public the letter he had received. 
When its contents did come to be known the reason for 
concealing them was obvious, for in it Paschal un- 
hesitatingly refused to permit the king liberty in the 
investiture of bishops, and holding to the usual fiction 
that the royal advisers were responsible for the claim, 
urged him to reject the advice of men who were leading 
him astray. That of course left the door open for 
further negotiations and saved the pope the unwelcome 
task of breaking with the king, Instead however of 
allowing this letter to be read, Henry appealed to his 
messengers. The three bishops brought a strange tale. 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 211 

They declared that in a private interview Paschal had 
traversed all his previous utterances, and had declared 
himself content that Henry should invest with staff 
and ring, so long as he was heedful to promote " religious 
persons " to the bishoprics. As an explanation of the 
singular fact that a decision of this gravity was con- 
veyed by word of mouth, the bishops stated that 
Paschal feared to commit the resolution to writing 
lest the other kings of Europe hearing of the privilege 
granted to England should claim the same. They 
further declared on the same authority that the arch- 
bishop was ordered to accept their statement as his 
commission for consecrating the bishops whom Henry 
chose to invest. 

Naturally Anselm's envoys protested. They appealed 
to the official letter which the archbishop had received, 
demanded that the letter to Henry should be produced, 
and hinted at faithlessness on the part of the bishops. 
Recrimination between the parties grew hot. The 
king's party insolently refused in connection with a 
high affair of State to accept the evidence of monks, 
men who had abjured all interest in mere mundane 
matters. But, objected Baldwin, this is no mere affair 
of State, it is an affair of the most directly religious 
moment. No matter, was the answer, we know you 
to be both wise and zealous ; but you have no right to 
expect that the testimony of a few monks should 
outweigh the testimony of high -placed and honour- 
able Churchmen like the bishops. That may be so, 
retorted the monk, but what of the letters ? Pshaw, 
letters are after all no more than pieces of sheepskin 
with a lump of lead hung to them. We count them of 
little moment against the evidence of an archbishop. 



212 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

What ? cried the scandalised monk. The Gospels are 
mere sheepskins. Will you say the same about them ? 

Opinion on the veracity of the bishops will alwaj'S 
vary, since the evidence is not suiBcient to decide the 
matter with finality. It is not very credible that the 
pope gave a definite instruction in a letter and con- 
tradicted it in a verbal message. On the other hand 
it is equally difficult of belief that three Churchmen 
(to credit them with no higher motive) were so foolish 
as to profier that plain statement without some support 
for it. They had enough knowledge of public afiairs to 
know that Anselm would never accept so far-reaching 
a decision without inquiry into the reason why it con- 
flicted with his instructions. Had they invented the 
whole story, they must have known that its falsity was 
sure to be revealed. The probability is — and Paschal's 
silence about homage in the letters strengthens it — 
that the pope in a private interview, when Anselm's 
messengers were absent, expressed himself in terms 
which were less rigorous than those of his letters. 
The Roman court always found Anselm too uncom- 
promising to make a facile negotiator. Paschal may 
have expressed that, and the bishops, wishing to please 
their king and not sharing their primate's position in 
the whole matter, may have exaggerated every hint of 
a possible relaxation. Consciously or unconsciously 
they heightened all the colours in their report, made 
definite what the pope had left vague, and turned into 
a public declaration what was meant as a private hint 
to the king's ear in order to soften the severe non 
possunius attitude of the letters. 

The statement by the bishops, whether true or false, 
gained the king what he most desired, time. It was 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 213 

necessary to send a new embassy to Rome and request 
fresh instructions. Anselm's letter had a little more in- 
sistence in its tone. " I have heard in the council of 
Rome my lord Urban of venerable memory excommuni- 
cate kings and laity who should grant investitures and 
intromit with Church property, and those who accepted 
such investiture or did homage in such circumstances, 
and those who consecrate ecclesiastics who receive such 
investiture. Let your holiness then be pleased to 
remove this excommunication from England, that I may 
remain there without peril to my own soul, or make 
me know that you intend to maintain it at all hazards, 
or, if it please your prudence to make certain reserves, 
be pleased to indicate them to me in a sure way. I 
ask further to be determined by an order on your side 
concerning what I ought to do with regard to those 
who during this truce may receive investiture and 
with regard to those who consecrate them." Anselm 
had learned at Rome some of the difficulties which 
crowded round the supreme see. He had no wish to 
embarrass the pope by taking precipitate action on his 
own authority. Rather did he put himself unreservedly 
in Paschal's hands, and recognise that if the Church 
were to act powerfully in this matter it must act 
unitedly. The r61e suited the temper of the archbishop, 
who was ever stronger in passive resistance than in 
initiative. 

The last sentence of the letter refers to the agree- 
ment according to which Henry was to be at liberty 
to invest new bishops, while Anselm, though not 
required to consecrate them, was not to refuse com- 
munion with them. The king proceeded in accordance 
with the agreement to appoint Roger a court chancellor 



2 14 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

to the see of Salisbury, and another Roger the royal 
larderer to that of Hereford. One of these men had 
won the king's high approval, because, on a morning 
when Henry attended Mass before going to hunt, he 
had shown an extraordinary power of racing through 
the divine service. That was Henry's idea of what 
qualified the " religious persons " whom according to 
the episcopal messengers he was empowered to invest 
with the charge of men's souls. Practically Anselm 
was fighting for the right on the part of the Church to 
refuse nominees of such a type. When Henry ignoring 
the terms of their truce required the archbishop to 
consecrate these two, he firmly refused. The king had 
already appointed William Giffard to be bishop of 
Winchester, and, since he was worthy of the office and 
had not accepted investiture from the king, Anselm 
was willing to consecrate Giffard. But this Henry 
refused to allow and demanded that the archbishop 
must consecrate all three or none. The motive was 
obvious, too obvious to deceive any man of intelligence. 
During the delay larderer Roger died, vainly begging 
the primate to grant him the grace of consecration 
even on his deathbed. The archbishop only smiled at 
a petition the pathetic illogicality of which it was not 
in his nature to understand. 

Henry appointed Reinhelm one of the queen's house- 
hold to the vacant see, and, when Anselm again refused 
to consecrate, ordered the Archbishop of York to carry 
out the rite. It was a distinct breach of agreement 
and a contemptible move. Yet Gerard of York, jealous 
of the prerogatives of Canterbury and perhaps hoping 
to make favour at the court for life, was prepared to 
obey. But suddenly men learned to their surprise that 



( 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 215 

Reinhelm, courtier though he was, had sent back staff 
and ring to the king with the declaration that he 
counted a consecration on these terms no blessing but 
a curse. A greater surprise however was in store. 
The bishops were assembled in the church in London 
for the consecration of Roger and Giffard, when the 
latter also rebelled. Pressure of the coarse kind which 
the age understood was brought to bear on him, but 
persuasion and threats were alike useless. He knew 
from what Reinhelm had suffered all that was in store 
for him, but he rejected consecration on these terms. 

Beauclerk drove the rebels from the court and 
stripped them of their property. But the event was 
significant, and he was shrewd enough to recognise that 
he had gone too far. A new sense of their responsibility 
was growing among the higher clergy in England. 
Anselm's steady protest had not been wholly wasted. 
The humiliation of a position which put the Church's 
leaders at the mercy of one man was penetrating even 
into courtiers. When it penetrated the seared conscience 
of a courtier, it could no longer be ignored. Uninten- 
tionally the king aided the movement ; he allowed a 
synod of the English clergy to be summoned at 
Westminster on September 29 1102. No synod had met 
in the kingdom for twenty-six years. The decisions of 
the council are interesting in the light they cast on the 
social condition of England, and are especially inter- 
esting since they show the aims which earnest Church- 
men set before them. Side by side is found the 
condemnation of those who traffic in " men like brute 
beasts," and of those who traffic in ecclesiastical offices, 
of the sons of priests who inherit their fathers' churches 
and of the abbots who dub men knights, of the clergy 



2i6 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

who refuse to put away their wives and of the laity 
who persist in wearing long hair. More significant to 
Beauclerk in his struggle with Anselm was the fact 
that six abbots were deposed for simony and three for 
causes of a similar character. That was a direct chal- 
lenge to the court, for the men had been appointed by 
the king and the first act of a synod was to condemn 
them. No sooner was the Church allowed a voice in 
its corporate capacity than it used its new-found 
liberty. The Stuarts were wise when they forbade 
General Assemblies of the Kirk. Men who had been 
afraid to utter a protest when they stood alone were 
not afraid to utter it in their joint capacity, especially 
since their archbishop and not they would bear the 
brunt of the king's anger. Even the fact that the men 
had met and realised their common mission as the 
leaders of the Church within England helped to spread 
the new spirit. 

Beauclerk felt the ground slipping away beneath 
him, and knew that the cause of all was Anselm. He 
made one last efibrt to treat with his primate apart 
from Rome. Appearing suddenly in Canterbury he 
attempted to persuade Anselm to yield, but was met by 
the reply that the letters from Rome which the king 
himself had desired were on their way. Beauclerk 
grew angry. The blood of the Conqueror was in his 
veins, and he could ill brook any restraint. Besides he 
may have honestly resented the hard measure which 
was meted out to him. He had yielded everything 
which the Church vainly demanded during the reign of 
his brother, had surrendered all the property of the 
sees, had refused to interfere with the Church's manage- 
ment of its property, had permitted free intercourse 



I 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 217 

to be restored with Rome and had recently suffered a 
synod to meet within his realm. His only reward for 
all this consideration was that the Church treated him 
worse than it had treated Rufus, that mocker at all 
religion and spoiler of the Church. 

Whether the king fairly lost his self-control for 
a time, or, not knowing the man with whom he had 
to deal, tried to terrify Anselm into submission the 
royal attitude became very menacing. Men dreaded 
a return to the old violent measures of Rufus. Prayers 
were offered in many places for the safety of the 
archbishop. But, when the letters arrived from 
Rome, the king suddenly changed his tone. He 
refused to publish the letter which the pope had 
communicated to him ; but from the letter which was 
sent to Anselm there can be no doubt as to its tenor. 
It became evident to the king that he could only 
gain his end by temporising or by a final rupture 
with Rome. Since from motives of religion or policy 
he was not prepared to break with Rome, he chose 
to temporise; and he proposed that Anselm should 
himself go to Rome and lay the whole position of 
affairs before Paschal. By this means Henry hoped 
at least to free himself of the man who was the 
nerve of the entire movement. 

After some hesitation the archbishop consented. 
He too had received a letter from the pope, but 
he refused to open it because, if it were found un- 
sealed, his enemies were not incapable of declaring 
that he had falsified the contents. A further reason, 
however, which made him willing to leave the country 
and unwilling to open the letter until he was beyond 
England, was that lie had good cause to suspect its 



21 8 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

contents. He felt sure it contained an intimation 
that Paschal had already excommunicated the bishops 
who had brought the false report from Rome, and 
counted it possible that it notified the excommuni- 
cation of the king. He was accordingly afraid lest 
he should run the risk of his soul's hurt, were he to 
continue in association with men who were under 
the ban of the Church. The fact, it may be added, 
that Anselm counted this likely is a clear proof 
of what in his opinion the pope ought to do. He 
expected the pope to take the initiative. Since the 
disobedience had been against the canons of a council 
of the whole Church, it was for the official head 
of the Church to visit that disobedience with the 
Church's censure. Anselm was prepared to support 
such action. 

But the archbishop only consented to go to Rome, 
if that was the desire of the nation. At the Easter 
court which met in Winchester 1103 the request 
was made by the entire council. Anselm made no 
delay but crossed at once to Le Bee. There on 
opening his letter from the pope he found his ex- 
pectations partly fulfilled. The pope had excom- 
municated not only the bishops who brought the 
false report, but all who relying on their statement 
had accepted investiture at the king's hands, because 
even the prophet whom a prophet had deceived did 
not escape death. This last journey to Rome on 
which Anselm set out was very difierent from that 
which he made under Rufus. He departed in all 
honour and outward respect. Henry had no desire 
to resort to extreme measures. The prelate had 
ofiered a gentle but invincible opposition. Evidently 



THE INVESTITURE QUESTION 219 

then a conflict with him meant embarrassment but 
no danger. Henry need not fear that his archbishop 
would put him under the ban. Yet it was better 
for Henry's plans that Anselm should be quietly 
removed out of the way, for the synod had shown 
how capable he was of inspiring the Church with 
a new spirit of resistance. It is further possible 
that the king counted on the fact that the old man 
would be averse to prolonging the struggle and might 
do his best toward bringing the Roman court to a 
more practicable temper in order to secure peace. 
If that was his hope, the result deceived it, for his 
gentle opponent by very meekness stiffened the resist- 
ance of Rome. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Concoedat 

There followed a series of negotiations which are 
somewhat tedious to trace in detail. On the one side 
was the cautious and unscrupulous Henry, who was 
seeking to maintain unimpaired all the privileges of 
the Crown, but who was unwilling to involve himself 
in an open quarrel with the Church. Throughout 
he played the game of delay, because the archbishop 
was already an old man worn with fasting, and his 
successor might prove more pliable. On the other 
side was the court of Rome, which had begun to see 
that a compromise was inevitable and was therefore 
too cautious to commit itself to an extreme position 
which would give that compromise the appearance of 
a surrender. And between these was Anselm, uncom- 
promisingly holding to the orders he had received 
from Church councils, and by his mild tenacity 
shaming the pope into at least an appearance of 
firmness. 

When Anselm landed at Wissant, he found himself 
at once among friends, all of whom were eager to 
offer him hospitality. But no place was so grateful 
to him as the old nest at Le Bee, and no society 
so cono-enial as that of fellow-monks : at Le Bee 



THE CONCORDAT 221 

he accordingly lingered about three months. The 
summer of this year was peculiarly sultry, and all 
who loved him urged him not to venture into the 
heats of Italy till the cooler season. Even Henry 
wrote to suggest that his archbishop should not 
weary himself by a difficult journey, but be content 
with sending an envoy to transact the negotiations 
at Rome. It may be legitimate to suspect that the 
new solicitude was only partly due to personal regard, 
and that the king desired to keep his archbishop 
away from both Rome and England. The letter 
however did not reach the exile till he was already 
at Maurienne on his southward road ; and, contenting 
himself with a courteous reply, he pressed on. 

At Rome he was received with all honour, and 
lodged in the rooms at the Vatican which had been 
Urban's gift to the " pope of the second world." There 
too William of Warelwast soon appeared, diligent 
as ever about the business of his new master, skilful 
as ever in the manipulation of strings which his 
opponent disdained to touch. The cause came to be 
heard before the Curia. Warelwast pleaded strongly 
the peculiar circumstances in which the King of 
England was placed, and urged the evil influence it 
would produce on his policy if Rome branded with 
its disapproval a ruler of his character, after the 
ungodly Rufus had escaped all censure. His appeal, 
supported by means of persuasion more powerful 
than words, produced some effect, for signs of agree- 
ment were visible among his auditors. In an un- 
guarded moment the envoy clinched the situation 
with great brusqueness. " Let what will be said on 
this side or on that, all men may take it as certain 



222 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

that, not even to save his crown, will King Henry 
surrender his rights of investiture." But the pope 
was not to be browbeaten in this fashion before his 
own court. " As God is mj' witness," was Paschal's 
retort, " not to save his head will the pope suffer 
the king to claim with impunity control over the 
churches." 

These were " prave orts." It remained to be 
seen what Paschal meant to do. A new papal letter 
was prepared for England. It abounded in compli- 
ments and congratulations to the king over the birth 
of his firstborn son, it granted Henry the free 
exercise of certain unknown privileges which his 
father had enjoyed, but it maintained the principle 
of the Church's right to investiture, and pronounced 
excommunicate all who had received or should accept 
investiture at the king's hands. Yet the letter care- 
fully refrained from touching the king, the head 
and front of the offence. When the letter arrived 
in England, Henry drew from it the conclusion that, 
if Paschal had been free to act after his own wishes, 
he would have found some excuse for permitting the 
king to evade obedience to the canons. He diligently 
represented both to his council and to his people 
that Anselm was finally responsible for this severity. 
And certainly the letter leaves that impression. The 
pope, with the instinct for evading responsibility 
and direct action which belongs to weak men, per- 
sisted in laying the blame for Henry's action on the 
counsellors who had given him bad advice, and sug- 
gested that his own severity of tone was due to the 
necessity of his position. One clause in the letter 
runs, "Ask thyself whether it be to thy credit or 



THE CONCORDAT 223 

discredit that a bishop like Anselm whom all the 
world honours must remain without the country be- 
cause of thine action." The words have little meaning, 
unless Warelwast had informed the pope how Henry, 
in the event of Rome refusing to yield, had deter- 
mined to treat his archbishop; and the fact that 
Rome with this knowledge abstained from any 
stronger measures was a sufficient hint that Henry 
was free to act toward Anselm as he pleased. In 
one thing the letter succeeded; it kept the door 
open for negotiations between Rome and England. 

There was nothing further for Anselm to do in 
Rome. He quitted the city towards the end of 
November, and was escorted across the dangerous 
district of the Apennines by a guard from the famous 
Countess Matilda. Like him she was growing old, 
and perhaps a little weary of a life which had been 
one of continual struggle. She consulted the arch- 
bishop as to whether she might not now enter religion 
and, leaving the field where she had so long fought 
the battles of Holy Church, devote the evening of 
her days to prayer for her own soul. In his letter 
of thanks for her protection Anselm dissuaded her 
from the step. She could serve God and the Church 
better in the estate in which she was. The utmost 
he allowed was that she should keep a nun's dress 
beside her, and assume it during her last hours. God, 
who knew her heart's desire and who had sent the 
hindering duties, would take the will for the deed. 
Yet Anselm had once and again refused to allow 
that a man's family relations were sufficient cause to 
prevent him from undertaking monastic vows. A 
narrow construction of religious duty was the weak- 



224 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

ness of monasticism, and even this beautiful spirit 
did not escape its influence. 

At Piacenza the unwearied Warelwast overtook the 
travellers. When the two parties separated in Rome, 
he had expressed the intention of making a pilgrimage 
to the tomb of St. Nicholas at Bari. The monks drily 
complimented him on the rapid travelling which had 
made it possible for him to fulfil his vow and yet 
overtake them on the road. They suspected that St. 
Nicholas did not receive all Warelwast's votive offer- 
ings. Together the two companies crossed the Alps, 
but, before they reached Lyons where Anselm pur- 
posed to pass the Christmas season, the envoy delivered 
himself of what was practically an ultimatum. " I 
withheld from you at Rome the final commission of my 
king, because I anticipated that our business there 
would receive a different issue ; but I must tell it you 
now. If you mean to come back to England and be to 
him what former archbishops were to former kings, 
he will hail your coming." " Have you," answered 
the archbishop, " anything further to add ? " "I am 
speaking to a man of understanding," was the reply. 
" And I understand," Anselm answered. There was no 
need for further words. The Christmas season was to 
begin a new period of exile. 

Anselm's position was not an easy one. The action 
which Rome had seen fit to take thrust him into a very 
difficult situation. He could not on the ground of the 
investiture question take open action against Henry. 
The king's disobedience was against no law of the 
primate's creation : it was against the law of the whole 
Church. It was for the earthly head of the Church to 
condone or to condemn that contumacy. Since Rome 



THE CONCORDAT 225 

had practically condoned the offence by refraining from 
excommunication of the king, it would have been an 
arrogating of powers which he had no right to claim 
and a tacit condemnation of the action of Rome, had 
the archbishop proceeded to any overt act against the 
king. On the other hand Rome's action made it im- 
possible for him to return to England, for the pope, 
while hesitating to strike the chief offender, had laid 
under the ban all bishops who accepted investiture 
from the king. If then Anselm returned to England, 
he could not exercise his office and avoid communion 
with these men. Yet if he held relations with them 
he brought the guilt of intercommunion with anathe- 
matised persons on himself and belittled in men's eyes 
the sentence of excommunication under which they 
lay. The only means of avoiding such intercourse was 
to live in practical retirement in some monastery or 
manor of his diocese. He judged it better to find his 
place of retirement in Lyons. To remain at Lyons im- 
plied an equal inactivity so far as the archiepiscopal 
duties were concerned, and presented a clearer, more 
intelligible protest. 

Yet the fact that he elected to remain at Lyons 
exposed Anselm to an inevitable misconstruction. 
What most men in England saw was that their new 
king was prepared to treat the Church with a respect 
which it had never received from Rufus, but that the 
leader of the Church refused their king what he had 
granted without hesitation to Rufus. Beauclerk was 
careful to represent matters from this point of view, 
and to maintain a cautious respect for the rights of the 
Church. He whispered that this was not the primate 
England needed, this scholar and saint, who was more 
15 



226 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

monk than archbishop, and who preferred to remain 
in an idle peace at Lyons rather than undertake the 
charge of his diocese at home. 

Anselm's letters during the year and a half he spent 
in Lyons take a new edge of directness, as he insists on 
the principles inv^olved in his act. " It appears," so he 
wrote to the prior of Christ Church, " as though I were 
shunning my duty without cause. . . . It is not that I 
shun duty, but that I cannot fulfil my duty where and 
as I ought. Men there are, and you know their names, 
with whom I cannot communicate without peril to my 
own soul. Yet if I entered into close relations with the 
king, I could not avoid communion with them. What 
should I do for instance were I to go to court in order 
to crown the king and say mass, while these men stood 
beside me ? I cannot expel them from the chapel- 
royal ; I dare not pray with them ; I must not with- 
hold my customary duty from the king, since he has a 
right to expect it and the pope has enjoined it." The 
hopeless dilemma into which the papal action had 
thrust him was manifest, but he left others to draw 
the conclusion. With entire loyalty he nowhere per- 
mitted himself a word of complaint against the court 
whose hesitation was exposing him to cruel miscon- 
struction. And he closed his letter with a vigorous 
sentence : " One thing I wish you to know : it is my 
resolution with God's help to make myself no man's 
vassal and to swear fealty to no man." 

It was on this resolution, its novelty and its danger, 
that the king and his counsellors continually fastened. 
And the main strength of the king's position was that 
he could appeal to Lanfranc's attitude toward the same 
demand. No previous archbishop of England had hesi- 



THE CONCORDAT 227 

tated to swear fealty : why should this one refuse ? 
What right had Anselm to rob his lord of the honour 
which was the royal due from every subject in 
England ? What right had the bishops to make them- 
selves different from all other men in the realm ? 
Anselm felt the difficulty, as a letter to the king shows. 
" Your Majesty deigns to send me the assurance of 
your friendship, and to add that there is none whom 
you would more willingly receive within your kingdom 
than myself, if I would but consent to be with you 
on the same terms as Lanfranc was with your father. 
For your goodwill I thank you, but with reference to 
the other matter I reply that neither in baptism nor at 
my ordination did I pledge myself to observe the law 
or custom of your father or of Lanfranc, but the law of 
God and the law imposed on me by my orders." 

On this again his opponents fastened ; the king es- 
pecially resented it as a slight on his father's memory, 
since he interpreted it to imply a censure alike on 
Lanfranc and on the Conqueror. Did Anselm mean 
to suggest that his predecessor had not promised to 
observe the law of God and the law of his orders ? 
Was this archbishop the first who understood the 
sacredness of his office ? The misrepresentation stung 
the archbishop who had no thought of claiming for 
himself a superior righteousness. He wrote to Queen 
Matilda : " I have said nothing against the king's 
father and Archbishop Lanfranc, men of great and 
venerable name " (in the extract from the letter to the 
king quoted above). " As to the demand urged on me 
and supported by their action I cannot perform it 
because of what I heard with my own ears at Rome." 
But how keenly he felt the allegation is specially 



228 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

apparent in a letter to his old friend Gondulf of 
Rochester. " Some meddlesome mischief-maker out 
of the villainy of his own heart has explained my 
letter to the king as though I professed ever to have 
kept the law of God, and as though I slandered the 
king's father and Lanfranc as men who neglected that 
law. The men who say such things have either a 
narrow or a malicious mind. For in their time these 
men, great and venerable as they were, did what in my 
time I cannot without peril to my own soul." 

More than a year passed, letters and messengers came 
and went across the Channel. But meantime Henry 
took a false step. After Warelwast's return the king 
proceeded to lay hands on the property of the see of 
Canterbury. The confiscation was not so complete nor 
so insolently eflfected as under Rufus. Henry for- 
warded part of the revenue to its rightful owner with 
a courteous message that it was by no wish of his the 
archbishop was not in peaceful possession of the whole. 
And no royal officers but two men of the archbishop 
were appointed commissioners to take charge of the 
confiscated estates and remit the money to the fisc. 
None the less was it from the royal point of view a 
false step. It gave Anselm the opportunity of inde- 
pendent action, since the king by his act had come 
into conflict, not with the law of the universal Church, 
but with the special rights of the see of Canterbury. 
Its archbishop could now vindicate those rights by his 
own authority without waiting for Rome. 

There seemed however a last hope of intervention 
from Rome on the larger question. During the summer 
of 1104 Henry had sent another embassy to Paschal. 
A council was to be held at Rome, and the position of 



THE CONCORDAT 229 

affairs in England was to come before it. From Lyons 
the trusty Baldwin was despatched to represent the 
archbishop's position, and Anselm wrote an urgent 
letter to his old friend John of Telese, now bishop of 
Tusculum, in which he besought him to take heed that 
no harm was done at the council to the authority of 
the holy see. Other supporters, among them the 
Countess Matilda, brought strong pressure to bear 
on Paschal in the interest of Anselm. At last men 
hoped for definite and final action against Henry, but 
Paschal in the Lenten Council of 1105 confined him- 
self to the excommunication of the king's counsellors, 
especially of Robert of Meulan, w^ho was regarded as 
his chief adviser in his ecclesiastical action. The pope 
pronounced it impossible to proceed against the king, 
because the latter had promised to send further envoys 
after Easter. 

This decision only added to the number of those with 
whom Anselm, if he returned to England, could hold no 
communion, and made his return more difficult than 
ever. Anselm saw that it was idle to expect further 
help from Rome, and reluctantly resolved to act inde- 
pendently against the king on the ground of his con- 
fiscation of the Canterbury revenues. At this time 
Henry was in Normandy. The uneasy peace between 
the brothers had come to its inevitable end, as all men 
except the unready Robert had foreseen, and the younger 
brother had crossed the Channel and begun war. 

Anselm left Lyons and proceeded north into 
Champagne. Hearing that Countess Adela, the 
daughter of the Conqueror, was dangerously ill at 
Blois, he turned aside to visit her there. He found 
her convalescent, and did not conceal that the object of 



230 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

his journey was to excommunicate her brother. The 
countess was deeply moved by the news, and persuaded 
the archbishop to return to Chartres while she made 
the attempt to persuade Henry and avoid an open 
rupture. Henry was amenable to reason. His position 
in Normandy and his aims there made it exceedingly 
desirable that he should not be under the ban of the 
Church. The fact that Philip of France had been com- 
pelled only a year before to humble himself and sue 
for peace with the Church proved how much power 
an excommunication exercised over men's minds. 
These things may have had more influence over the 
wily king than even the persuasions of his sister. 

A meeting was accordingly arranged between the 
king and his archbishop at Laigle between Seez and 
Mortagne on July 22. So far as concerned their 
personal quarrel, Henry frankly acknowledged the 
wrong he had done in laying hands on the property 
of the see, and undertook to restore not only the 
property but even the revenues which he had already 
appropriated. He refused however to abandon the 
Churchmen who had given him their support, and 
required the primate not to decline intercommunion 
with such as had accepted bishoprics at the royal 
hands. In connection with the larger question between 
Church and State Henry proposed one of those com- 
promises which seem so impossible in the heat of 
the struggle and so obvious when the heat has cooled. 
The king surrendered the right of investiture : staff 
and ring, the symbols of spiritual authority, were to be 
delivered into the hands of the bishop by the Church, 
and thus the right of the Church as the only source of 
spiritual authority was openly recognised. But the 



THE CONCORDAT 231 

Church on its part was to pay homage : a bishop like 
every other subject was to acknowledge his fealty 
to the king, and pledge in customary form his loyal 
service to the State. 

The Concordat must be referred to the pope. Only 
Paschal could finally ratify it, and only Paschal could 
free from the Church's ban the men in England whom 
he had laid under excommunication, and authorise the 
archbishop to hold communion with them. Until a 
reply returned from Rome, Anselm remained in Nor- 
mandy, he refused to enter England until his position 
and power there were made perfectly clear. But the 
archbishop had secret scruples about consenting to 
return, even if Rome, as he foresaw, consented to 
accept the Concordat. He had become in this matter 
'papa paixdioT. The pope would doubtless allow the 
prelate to consecrate a bishop, even if that bishop had 
paid homage to the king. But what if a bishop 
refused to pay homage ? Must the archbishop refuse 
him consecration until he had satisfied the royal 
demands, and so use his authority either to compel 
a scrupulous conscience into an act which several 
councils had declared to merit excommunication, or 
to drive out of the Church its best men ? 

While the embassy was on its way to Rome, Anselm 
consulted his old friend Hugh of Lyons on the subject. 
" The whole difiiculty between the king and me seems 
to be that, whilst allowing himself, as I hope, to submit 
to the papal decisions on investitures of churches, he is 
not yet disposed to surrender the homages of prelates 
and is resorting to the holy see in hope of getting leave 
to do as he wishes in this particular. Should he succeed 
however I do not know how to act, if any man of 



232 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

religion were to refuse upon election to become the 
king's man for any bishopric or abbacy. It seems a 
hard thing to require such a candidate on his obedience 
to do this, and yet if I do not I shall evidently be 
paving the way for the unworthy entrance into those 
dignities of such as not being men of religion may have 
no scruple on the subject." The Archbishop of Lyons 
had not always found himself in perfect agreement 
with Rome, but in this case he strongly advised his 
brother to give way. " I beg and advise you, for I 
write in the double capacity of suppliant and coun- 
sellor, to yield an unaffected submission to the pope's 
orders, so that you may not seem to set more store by 
your own opinion than by his authority, and thus incur 
the reproach of resisting not only the temporal and 
royal authority but the ecclesiastical and priestly. 
And yet unhappy man that I am," he adds in a 
sentence which shows as clearly the tender relations 
between the two men as the significance which he 
attached to papal censure, " in this I become the 
author and instigator of my own loss, since I strive 
to remove one who after God is my only comfort and 
my only jo}^ the life of my soul, from the sight of 
those eyes which I now seem to employ uselessly, 
since that which they were wont to enjoy, namely, 
the sight of my well-beloved friend, it will not be 
granted them to see and even to hope ever to see 
again. Yet far be it from me that for my own 
temporary advantage I should envy the general 
salvation of so many souls ; verily I will not seek 
my own things, but the things of Jesus Christ." 

The letter from the pope arrived in the spring of 
1106, and as Anselm had foreseen accepted practically 



THE CONCORDAT 233 

the terms of Henry's Concordat, while it sought to 
safeguard the principle. Homage was allowed, and 
the prelate was authorised to consecrate bishops who 
had paid it; but care was taken that this was only 
a permission in present circumstances, and the hope 
was expressed that Anselm might be able through 
his personal influence to persuade the king into the 
surrender of this point also. Anselm was further 
empowered to grant absolution to all the excommuni- 
cated bishops in England, even to those who had 
brought the false report back from Rome. 

Not yet however was the archbishop free to return 
to his duty in England. Both before the embassy was 
sent to Rome and after the letter arrived there were 
long delays. Henry was busy with his war against 
Normandy, and caught at every excuse which could 
postpone the final settlement. While Anselm was 
involved in negotiations, he was at least powerless 
to interfere with the king's other schemes. Now it 
was the stormy weather which prevented his envoys 
from crossing the Channel. Again he wrote to say 
that he had learned there were two popes fighting with 
each other in Rome, and to suggest that it were better 
to wait and see which of them was to come out con- 
queror. When the papal letter had made it clear 
that Rome was not impracticable on the question, the 
king became more anxious to have his venerable prelate 
back to England. But now sickness fell on Anselm. 
The end was beginning to threaten after his many toils 
and self-imposed privations. At Le Bee he was brought 
so near to death that the abbots of the neighbourhood 
assembled for the last rites. The king hastened to the 
monastery and was now profuse in the evidences of an 



234 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

unfeigned affection when it could no longer be mis- 
understood. The two men, so unlike in many things, 
so like in many others, reached some recognition each 
of the other's position before they separated, the arch- 
bishop to return to his duty at Canterbury, the king 
to prosecute the war in Normandy. 

At last Anselm, with ever}^ question determined so 
far as Henry and himself were concerned, crossed the 
Channel and was received with the utmost enthusiasm 
at Dover in September 1106. But England was not 
an absolute monarchy ; that the powers of the Crown 
were not exactly defined did not mean that the English 
people had no voice. The question which had been 
so long and variously debated between Henry and 
Anselm was a constitutional question, involving an 
arrangement which deeply modified the powers and 
the rights of the Crown in England. Even when king 
and archbishop had seen their way to a settlement, 
the matter must come before the council of the realm. 
Until however the war in Normandy was at an end, 
nothing could be done towards a final settlement. 

In the end of September Henry was able to write to 
the archbishop and announce the victory of Tinchebray 
which made Normandy his own. It is one out of many 
illustrations which prove the strange confusion of men's 
moral judgments in the Middle Age to read how the 
victory was regarded by Eadmer and by many of the 
monastic party. Henry had ventured upon a wholly 
unjust war against his brother Robert. The only 
justification which could be found for it was mere 
revenge for Robert's earlier attack on England, a plea 
which ought to have formed an additional condemna- 
tion of the war in the judgment of Churchmen. Henry 



THE CONCORDAT 235 

had taken his brother prisoner, he was to keep him for 
many years in a dungeon and finally, with no one 
venturing a protest against the deed, was to put out 
his eyes. Yet many of the party who were the 
strongest supporters of ecclesiastical reform counted it 
certain that Tinchebray was a crowning mercy which 
God had seen fit to grant their king because of the 
peace he had patched up with his archbishop. So easy 
is it to tithe mint and to pass over justice. 

The Concordat between the Church and the State 
came for final determination before a great council 
held at London in August 1107, and there the ques- 
tion was again debated keenly. It is a mistake to 
imagine that the unwillingness to surrender to the 
demands of the Church arose merely from the personal 
pride and ambition of Norman kings. Often they 
merely represented the opinions of their counsellors, 
sometimes they were clearer of vision on the question 
than these. Men in England were proud of their 
kingdom, its liberties and its privileges, and were not 
inclined to sufifer the decisions of an Italian bishop 
to rob the Crown of its dignity and above all of its 
independence. A passage from one of Beauclerk's 
letters to a pope after Anselm's death proves how 
difficult the king often found his situation between 
two contending forces. " There is no end, as there is 
no measure, to their (the barons' and vassals') taunts 
and gibes. They tell me that, thanks to my remissness 
and want of zeal in asserting them, I am suffering 
the old prestige and the rights hitherto kept inviolate 
of my kingdom to be filched away from me." But 
at this particular council Henry had given his word, 
and he held stoutly to the arrangement he had made. 



236 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

It might have been possible for him, now that Nor- 
mandy was in his power and all his dominions loyally- 
supported him, now that the Church's censure was 
less to be dreaded, to have resiled from his agreement 
and to have thrown the blame of the rupture on the 
fact that he could not persuade his barons. But the 
character of Anselm had won the entire respect of 
his king, and had summoned into evidence all the 
best elements in his nature. He honoured the arch- 
bishop, now one of the best known men in Europe, 
with such honour as it was in him to pay. He recog- 
nised that the presence of such a man was an honour 
to his kingdom and a strength to his throne. If 
Anselm would only consent to come on certain terms, 
Henry after due consideration of the terms was pre- 
pared to grant them. By the firmness of the king 
and the archbishop the matter was finally arranged, 
and the Concordat of Laigle was accepted as the rule 
to govern Church and State in their mutual relations 
within England. The peace was publicly manifested 
in the solemn act of August 11 1107, when Anselm 
consecrated five bishops to vacant sees in England. 
One of them, it is interesting to note, was his inde- 
fatigable opponent William of Warelwast. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Conclusion 

Anselm's battles with the State were now at an end, 
but he had no long time to reap the fruits of victory. 
The keen sword was wearing through its scabbard, 
and already the hand of death was on him. Yet 
it was not granted him to close his life in peace ; he 
must struggle against the spirit of rebellion which had 
made its way among his clergy. 

He had the satisfaction at Whitsuntide 1108 of 
presiding over a great council of clergy and laity which 
came together to consider the condition of the Church 
in England. His struggle with the State had always 
had as its most powerful motive to win for the Church 
the opportunity to do her distinctive work within the 
kingdom. Now, when the opportunity was won, the 
Church must be instant to use it. The first peace with 
Henry had been employed to convene one council ; no 
sooner was the Concordat arranged than a second was 
summoned. The chief question which engaged the 
attention of the assembled Churchmen was the condi- 
tion of the parochial clergy. In accordance with the 
monkish ideals which the Benedictine revival had 
brought with it stringent regulations were passed to en- 
force celibacy on the whole body of the secular clergy. 

237 



238 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

On that subject England had remained saner than the 
Continent, but now the new ideas had their way. 

Anselm had the further satisfaction of using the 
high esteem in which he was held by the king in 
order to check the licence of the court. Whenever the 
court journeyed through England, it had been in the 
habit of billeting itself on the village where it chose 
to pass the night and of living at free cost on the 
villagers. Like other plagues the members of the 
court destroyed more than they used. With the in- 
solence which easily creeps on the courtier in his 
behaviour toward the bucolic, with the added insolence 
which arose from the courtier being a Norman and 
the rustic a Saxon, the destruction became wanton. 
Men saw their homes practically pillaged, the food 
which their visitors could not consume tossed carelessly 
to the dogs or the fire, the surplus of their wine used 
to wash the feet of horses ; men experienced those 
worse outrages which receive no forgiveness. So 
notorious had the conduct of the court grown, that, 
when the news reached a village of a probable visit 
from their king, the inhabitants often left their homes 
en masse, not to return till the locusts had departed. 
The archbishop showed a true sense that he was 
father in God to all his flock and set over them to be 
the reconciler of the divided interests and races in 
England. At his earnest representation Henry sternly 
put down the worst of these abuses. 

Discipline within the Church itself had not escaped 
scathless from the long absences of its primate. 
Bishops had learned the dangerous habit of liberty 
and of defiance to constituted authority. The Arch- 
bishop of York had always been jealous of the primacy 



CONCLUSION 239 

of Canterbury, but had had little need to show re- 
sentment since the superior was so rarely present to 
exert his authority. No sooner however was Anselm 
fairly installed, and the theory threatened to become 
a practical reality, than York rebelled. Gerard was 
dead, and a successor elected in his place. He must 
according to rule appear in Canterbury for consecra- 
tion and promise obedience to his superior. Flambard 
after many strange experiences had reappeared as 
bishop of Durham. It may have been at his instiga- 
tion that the archbishop-elect delayed to present 
himself in Canterbury, wrote direct to Rome for the 
grant of his pallium, and without having been con- 
secrated himself prepared to consecrate a bishop for 
St. Andrews. Anselm sent a strong remonstrance and 
warned his brother-archbishop that, if the canonical 
months elapsed without his having sought consecration 
from his primate, his election might be voided. At the 
same time he wrote to represent the position of affairs 
at Rome, and asked that the pallium, if forwarded at all, 
should be forwarded to Canterbury, whence it could 
be transmitted to York when Thomas had tendered 
his submission. The archbishop-elect tried every 
means of evasion and delay. He represented the 
poverty of his see and his own lack of money as the 
excuse for his failure to proceed southward, but 
betrayed clearly that he hoped to postpone the whole 
question until the age and sickness of the primate had 
made the see of Canterbury vacant. But Anselm was 
not to be moved. The due subordination of office 
within the Church was to him an axiom in its efficient 
government,whether or not the presence of the hierarchy 
were essential to the Church's existence as the Church 



240 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

of Christ. He sent a sharp warning to Rome (for he 
knew his Rome) that, if there were any trifling with 
his position in the matter, he would refuse to remain in 
England. And one of his last letters was an equally 
sharp and curt epistle to Thomas of York, in which 
it was intimated that, unless his submission were 
profiered within a certain period, interdict would be 
pronounced. 

Interdict however was never to be pronounced by 
Anselm. The primate had not long to live. For some 
time he was unable to travel on horseback and must 
be carried to and fro in a litter. The brain was less 
ready to do the bidding of the still eager will ; his 
work was becoming a burden. With indomitable 
courage he had addressed himself to the task of 
attempting to reconcile the foreknowledge, predestina- 
tion, and grace of God with the freewill of man. It 
was ever the man's habit to attempt great things. 
But he complained that, while once his stylus had 
found it difficult to keep pace with his ideas, he had 
now an unwonted difficulty in composition. As the 
strength ebbed away, he said wonderingly that he 
sufiered no pain but only laboured under a total loss 
of appetite. With habitual self-control he who had 
once put constraint on himself to fast now controlled 
his body to eat. But it was the quiet and slow decay 
of all the vital functions. One care his fond monks 
could not persuade him to exercise over himself. He 
refused to surrender his lifelong habits of devotion, 
and to the end the life-worn man was carried into the 
oratory to take what part he was still able in Mass. 

At last his monks could not deceive themselves any 
longer. On Palm Sunday one of them spoke out the 



CONCLUSION 241 

fear of all. " Father, we have come to understand 
that you are about to leave the world and hold your 
Easter feast at the court of your Lord." The old 
man answered them : " I were glad, were such the 
will of the Lord. Yet should I prefer if He were to see 
fit that I might be suffered to continue here till such 
time at least as I have solved a certain question about 
the origin of the soul, because I know not whether 
after my departure anyone will complete it." " The 
search for truth still fires these great and restless 
spirits even at the moment when they go into the 
presence of the Truth. They prefer the love to the 
possession, and on the threshold of heaven regret the 
labour and the hope of earth." Nor do they ever 
forget the necessity of the brethren, because to abide 
may be more profitable for them. 

On the late evening of the following Tuesday the 
monks were chanting matins. In the archbishop's 
chamber one of those who watched by the sick man 
read the story of the Passion that by means of the 
lesson for the day he might share in the common 
service. When he had read " Ye are they which 
have continued with Me in My temptations, and I 
appoint unto you a kingdom as My Father hath 
ap]3ointed unto Me, that ye may eat and drink at My 
table," the labouring breath of the invalid warned 
them that the end was near. They lifted him from 
the bed and laid him, as the rule of his order com- 
manded, on the sackcloth and ashes along the floor. 
He died when the morning was beginning to break 
on the 21st of April 1109. 

He died as he had lived, with his thoughts busy 
about the questions of man's soul and its relation to 
16 



242 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

God, with the habits of a lifetime of devotion as his 
support to the end. 

In the Introduction the attempt was made to point 
out how the revived religious life within the Church 
brouo'ht with it an inevitable collision with the State. 
So soon as England had settled down after the Con- 
quest, it was certain that, if the archbishop shared 
this revived religious life, he would find himself in 
conflict with the Norman king. It may be worth 
while to attempt some estimate of what Anselm had 
won by his compromise. 

He had won for the Church a means of self-expres- 
sion throuo'h which the revived life could make itself 
felt in connection with the appointment of the 
Church's leaders. The opportunity was given and 
would now be valuable or useless according as the 
spirit which guided the Church's action was pure or 
otherwise. It may appear that, so long as the question 
of election was not determined, nothing was finally 
determined. Now the question of election was never 
raised throughout the whole contest. It may be said 
that, while Henry or any later king retained the power 
to present his larderer or his chancellor to a bishopric, 
he could be content to allow the Church to retain the 
power of conferring by staff and ring the spiritual 
authority on this candidate of his choice. He retained 
the substance, and could therefore suffer the Church to 
employ what forms it would. Yet it is one thing to 
present a candidate where his election must be ratified, 
and another to present him where the body which 
confers upon him final authority has the power to 
refuse that authority. Through the symbolic rite of 
staff and ring the Church had the power to refuse the 



CONCLUSION 243 

king's candidate and to bring matters to a deadlock. 
Should the king present to a bishopric a man whose 
character or qualifications were a scandal to the office, 
the Church had now the power to leave him un- 
equipped for the functions to which he had been 
chosen. It could protest not merely by low murmurs 
but by a public act. That power and the knowledge 
of its existence were able even to exert an indirect 
influence on the election, for the king knew that he 
must present the candidate of his choice to the public 
verdict of the English Church. When therefore the 
spirit which governed the Church was pure and high, 
it was sure to exert its influence potently though 
perhaps indirectly. When it was low, when bishops 
recked little of their office, the king would be able to 
ignore their verdict and do what he pleased. Anselm 
had created the channel through which the spirit 
which governed the councils of the Church had now 
the opportunity to show itself. If the opportunity 
were unused or misused, it was the fault of Churchmen 
themselves, the sign of their degradation, the means of 
their weakness. 

In order to attain what he desired Anselm appealed 
to Rome, and, since the victory was won by the aid of 
Rome, helped to fasten on England a yoke which neither 
we nor our fathers were able to bear. Because the action 
of such men has been unscrupulously used in favour 
of a theory of the papacy they neither knew nor held, 
those who dissent from that theory often think it neces- 
sary to belittle the acts and question the motives of the 
men whose action helped that authority. It were 
fairer to realise the situation in which the man found 
himself and the authority he did allow to Rome. He 



244 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

found himself alone, unsupported not only by the 
barons of England but by his own suffragan bishops 
in an aim which he believed to be vital for the work 
of the Church of God in England. None in England 
realised its significance. Because he found no help 
there, he turned to Rome. He wanted liberty for 
Christ's Church, and Rome could aid him to win it. 
When Rome rendered such aid, it brought England 
into closer subjection to the central authority. Anselm 
aided that. He helped to give the Church of Rome its 
opportunity. He made it possible for the grandest 
experiment which was ever tried on earth, the experi- 
ment of a supreme tribunal which existed for the 
ends of Christ, to be tried in England. That the 
experiment failed was partly due to its impossibility 
and partly due to the fact that Rome could not rise 
to the greatness of the opportunity. It turned the 
opportunity which Anselm had helped to give it to base 
ends, and England cast it out with contumely. 

It is also necessary to remember that the Rome 
of this century was not the Rome of later ages, 
not merely in the men who were its popes, but in 
the theory which good Churchmen held about its 
authority. They held and enforced very definite 
views about the limits of that authority. The Roman 
Curia was a centre where the best thought on ques- 
tions which concerned the whole Church could be 
matured. When there was any general question to 
be considered, it was of manifest advantage that the 
Church should unitedly consider its whole bearing 
and issues, and that when action required to be taken 
the action should be simultaneous and unanimous. 
But the central authority did not engross all power so 



CONCLUSION 245 

as to cramp the action of the Church in its national 
divisions. The communions in each land were free to 
determine their own local aifairs with the clearer 
judgment which arose from their better knowledge. 
Anselm had no hesitation about promptly refusing to 
admit a papal legate within England. Perhaps his 
one experience with a legate had been too unfortunate 
to encourage its repetition. He insisted that no legate 
should enter England so long as the Archbishop of 
Canterbury was in the realm. The primate was as 
little inclined to surrender the liberty of the episco- 
pate of England into the hands of a Roman bishop as 
into the power of a Norman king. 

Nor did the Churchmen of that day dream that their 
loyalty to the head of their Church robbed them of 
the power to criticise its decisions. They paid Rome's 
verdict the compliment of thinking that it deserved 
discussion. Their liberty was no mere theory but was 
translated into practice. The freedom of language 
which loyal Churchmen of the time exercised is start- 
ling to anyone who chooses to study the writings of 
a mediaeval saint at first hand and in something other 
than selections. Men like St. Bernard were not afraid, 
if they judged the pope mistaken or worse, to say it, 
and to say it publicly and roundly so that all men might 
hear.^ And none counted them the worse Churchmen 
because they did these things. That dread of free 
discussion which is more often the symptom of weak- 
ness than of strength was unknown to the Middle 
Age men. 

^ It were a pleasure, to hear, e.g., the judgment of St. Bernard on a 
pope who blessed the labours of an editor of La Croix. It would be 
pungent. 



246 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

The man however was even greater than his work. 
He enriched the religion of England, not merely by the 
specific victory he won, but by the character of the 
man who won it. The specific work of the Church 
and the ends for which it ought to work in England 
he brought forward more clearly; and, when those 
clashed in appointed strife with the condition of things 
as they were within the kingdom, his attitude was 
such as became a true Churchman. His unswerving 
rectitude, his transparent honesty in pursuit of the 
ends he desired, the furtherance of his purpose not by 
court intrigues but by simple appeal to reason and 
conscience, the nobility of his bearing toward those 
who opposed him, the charity of his judgment toward 
such as persecuted it, the simplicity with which he bore 
those persecutions, all these, because they were so 
full of the spirit of Christ, helped to make his aims 
more clear and more attractive. 

Not less did he teach the Church a needed lesson as 
to her true \v^eapons. In an age which believed in 
material force he flung himself with a superb confidence 
on the might of a meek and quiet spirit. His sweet 
reasonableness was his own chosen weapon and proved 
itself the most efficacious one. In a century which 
had begun to deal in excommunications with reckless- 
ness and to debase Church discipline into a means of 
seeking other than purely spiritual ends he did not 
have resort to that means of attack. When once he 
threatened to use it, the threat was sufficient. It was 
sufficient because he had never abused the weapon. 
Henry had measured the influence which the con- 
demnation of such a man could exert, and he could 
not afford wantonly to throw away that moral support 



I 



CONCLUSION 247 

to his throne. At the last moment, when he saw that 
nothing would move his archbishop, he yielded. Not 
only did Anselm, so far as he understood them, 
seek the things of Christ. He used, in order that he 
might attain them, the methods of Christ. One result 
is that it is impossible to sum up his contribution to 
England's religion by the statement that he won for it 
this thing or that. His contribution was himself, and 
to measure it rightly it is necessary to know him as 
well as his work. 

But England owes Anselm one other benefit. She 
owes to his action that the worst brunt of the suffer- 
ing, which every assertion of a great principle will 
always involve, fell not on her but on him. When 
one remembers the hideous war through which Ger- 
many needed to pass before the question between 
Church and State could be determined by a similar 
compromise, when one recalls such memories as Canossa, 
the Saxon rebellion which one pope fomented, and 
the treachery of Henry v. against his father which 
another pope did not venture to condemn, one recog- 
nises that it is in part to Anselm that England owes 
the absence of a similar struggle. The circumstances 
of course were different. The temptation was never 
so near Anselm as it was near Gregory and Urban to 
foment strife, to level excommunications, to release 
men from oaths of obedience when their release would 
help the Church's efforts. There might have been but 
few in England who would have supported him if he 
had taken that course ; but it is to his honour and to 
England's profit that he never showed the least in- 
clination to take such a course. He interposed on 
behalf of the coarse Rufus, after Rufus had worried 



248 ANSELM AND HIS WORK 

him out of his kingdom. He interposed again to 
support Beauclerk, when his opposition might have 
made civil war more envenomed. England suffered 
only indirectly from its primate's loyalty to what he 
conceived to be his duty. It was himself who suffered 
most. Dragged from the studies which he loved, flung 
into a course of ecclesiastical negotiation and political 
bartering which were alien to his gentle spirit, torn 
away from the monastic life which was his delight 
into the turmoil of affairs, misunderstood, exiled, he 
never flung strife into the alien land, but bowed his 
head and submitted to suffer for the principles in 
which he believed. It had been well for the cause of 
the Church in England had his successors made them- 
selves inheritors not merely of his principles but of 
his spirit. 



INDEX 



Abelard, 9. 

Adela of Blois, 229. 

Aelfeg of Canterbury, 88. 

Aix, council at, 38. 

Alban'.s, St., 82, 87, 195. 

Alexander, monk, 209. 

Alexander, pope, 85, 87. 

Anselm, youth, 13-20 ; at Le Bee, 
39 ; monk, 40 ; prior, 43 ; abbot, 
52 ; as teacher, 45, 62-65 ; letters, 
46-48, 141 ; sermon, 54 ; philo- 
sopher, 66-75 ; Meditations, 58, 
180 ; with Lanfranc in England, 
88-90 ; election as archbishop, 
105 ; gift to Rufus, 116 ; pal- 
lium, 123, 148 ; and legate Walter, 
150-54 ; at Winchester, 159-62 ; 
at Rome, 169 ; at Sclavia, 171 ; 
Cur Deiis Homo, 172-84 ; at Bari, 
186 ; the filioque, 187 ; at coun- 
cil of Rome, 190 ; in Lyons, 192, 
224 ; debates with Beauclerk, 
200-17 ; in Rome again, 221 ; 
Concordat, 230 ; reforms, 215, 
237-38 ; and Archbishop of York, 
238 ; death, 241 ; miracles, 59, 
192. 

Ansgot, 27. 

Aosta, 12. 

Arnulf, pupil, 40 ; grammarian, 62. 

Asceline, 93. 

Augustine, 74. 

Avars, 1, 3. 

Avranches, 33, 100. 

Baldwin, 138, 149, 165, 209, 211, 
229. 



Bamborough, 154. 

Bari, council in, 186. 

Barons and the Conqueror, 83 ; 

and Rufus, 95 ; and Anselm, 

135 ; and Beauclerk 199. 
Bee, Le ; its foundation, 21 ; its 

library, 63. 
Becca di Nona, 14. 
Becket, Thomas a, 10. 
Belesme, Robert of, 93, 210. 
Benedictines ; their rise, 5 ; and 

education, 38. iS'ee Monasticism. 
Bernard of Clairvaux, 10, 245. 
Blouet, Robert of, 117. 
Books, 63. 
Boso, 48, 172. 
Breteuil, Wm. of, 197. 
Brionne, 21, 31 ; Gilbert, Count of, 

27. 
Burgundy, 12. 
Burneville, 31. 

Caen, 43, 79, 93. 
Calvin, 184. 
Canossa, 10, 92. 
Cardinalate, 8, 
Celibacy, 8, 237. 
Chaise Dieu, 196. 
Charlemagne, 38. 
Chester, 100, 102. 
Christina, abbess, 204. 
Citeaux, 5. 
Clairvaux, 5. 
Clement, antipope, 122. 
Clermont Council, 122, 155. 
Cluny, 5, 20, 39, 166. 
Concordat, 231. 



249 



250 



INDEX 



Conrad, 13. 

Crusade, 122, 155, 186. 

Cur Deus Homo, 172. 

Danes, 1, 81. 

Donatus, 36. 
Dublin, 141. 
Duns Scotus, 75. 

Eadmee, 90, 165, 168, 234. 
Eastern Church, 186. 
Edith. See Maud. 
Eloisa, 27, 33. 

Ermenberga, 14, 15, 16, 19. 
Evreux, 23 ; bishop of, 93, 52. 

FiLIOQUE, 187. 

Flarabard. See Ranulf. 
Folcerad, 15. 

Gaunilo, 72. 

Gerard, clerk, 145 ; bishop of Here- 
ford, 149 ; archbishop of York, 
209, 214, 239. 

Gervais, St., 92. 

Giflfard, b. of Winchester, 198, 214, 
215. 

Gilbert, b. of Evreux, 52, 93. 

Gillingham, 124. 

Gloucester, 103, 104. 

Gondulf, b. of Rochester, 48, 53, 
87, 112, 133, 140, 228. 

Gregory vii. See Hildebrand. 

Gressan, 14. 

Guibert de Nogent, 45. 

Gundulf, 14, 18, 19, 39. 

Hastings, 117. 

Hayes, 146. 

Henry ii., 13. 

Henry iv., 57, 122. 

Henry v., 247. 

Henry of Huntingdon, 98. 

Henry, a. of Battle, 57, 87. 

Henry Beauclerk, 103, 197, 206 fiF., 

229 ff. 
Herbert, b. of Lisieux, 21. 
Herbert, b. of Norwich, 209. 
Herbert Losange, b. of Thetford, 

123, 149. 



Herfast, 80. 

Heriot, 116. 

Herlwin, 26 ff. 

Hildebrand, 8, 10, 56, 84 91, 122, 

166. 
Hirsau, 47. 

Homage, 190, 200, 231. 
Hubert, 84. 

Hugh, a. of Cluny, 166. 
Hugh, archb. of Lyons, 166, 231. 
Hugh the Wolf, 100. 
Humbert the Whitehanded, 13. 
Humbert of Maurienne, 14, 

Ingelram of Ponthieu, 29. 
Investiture, 8, 120, 201, 230, 242. 
See also Pallium. 

John, a. of San Salvator, 171, 229. 
John of Salisbury, 126, 206. 

Laigle, 230. 

Lambert, 15. 

Lambeth, council at, 205. 

Lanfranc, 9, 20, 33, 56, 78, 94, 98, 

153, 205, 226. 
Lanzo, 46. 
Lateran, 169. 
Legates, 8, 84, 145, 245. 
Leo IX., 25. 

London, councils at, 210, 235. 
Losange. See Herbert. 
Lyons, 166, 192, 224. 

Malcolm of Scotland, 203 

Marmoutier, 72. 

Matilda of Flanders, 78. 

Matilda, Countess, 122, 223, 229. 

Maud, Queen, 203, 227. 

Maurice, 48, 62. 

Maurice, b. of London, 197. 

Maurienne, 13, 221. 

Maurille, archb. of Rouen, 40, 50. 

Meulan, Robert of, 113, 126, 136, 
162, 229. 

Monasticism in Europe, 5, 30, 42, 
50, 76 f., 168 f.; in A.-S. Eng- 
land, 86. 

Monologium, 67. 

Mont Cenis, 20. 



INDEX 



251 



Mowbray, Robert de, 147, 154. 
Murierdarch, 141. 

Nicholas II., 79. 

Nicholas, St., 186, 224. 
Normandy, 2, 21. 
Normans in Italy, 167, 185. 

Odo of Champagne, 13. 
Odo, b. of Bayeux, 94. 
Orderic, 81, 210. 
Osbern (1), 44 ; (2), 89. 
Osmund of Salisbury, 149. 

Paganism in Normandy, 4, 23. 

Pallium, 8, 122, 148. 

Paschal 11., 194, 208, 210, 222, 

228. 
Paul, a. of St. Alban's, 82, 87. 
Pavia, 33. 
Peckham, 156. 
Philip of France, 230. 
Piacenza, 122, 169, 224. 
Proslogium, 71, 172. 

Ranulf, Flambard, 97, 114, 198, 

206, 239. 
Reinger, b. of Lucca, 191. 
Reinhelm, b. of Hereford, 214 f. 
Rheims, council at, 25. 
Richard, sans peur, 23. 
Richera, 19. 
Risle, 32. 
Robert of Normandy, 94, 110, 155, 

197, 199, 206, 234. 
Robert, b. of Chester, 209. 
Rochester, 113. 
Rockingham, 125. 
Roger, b. of Hereford, 214. 
Roger, b. of Salisbury, 214. 
Rome, council at, 190. 
Romsey, 204. 
Roscelin, 61, 70. 
Rouen, 33,, 92 ; archbishopric of, 25 ; 

council at, 23. 
Rufus. See William Rufus. 



Salerno, 91. 

Samson, b. of Worcester, 149. 

Saracens, 1. 

Saviour's, St., 87, 89, 140. 

Scholasticism, 9, 67. 

Schools, 38. 

Sclavia, 171. 

Scotland, 87. 

Simony, 82, 216. ' 

Sotteville, 92. 

Spiritus, Sancti De Processione, 186. 

Stephen, St., 79, 93. 

Stigand, 81. 

Thomas, archb. of York, 239. 
Tinchebray, 199, 234. 
Tirrel, Walter, 60. 
Trinity, 61, 70. 

Ueban II., 113, 122, 124, 144, 155, 
166, 169, 185, 194. 

Victor III., pope, 122, 166. 

Walchelin, b. of Winchester, 159. 

Walter, b. of Albano, 145, 150. 

Warelwast, William of, 145, 164, 
189, 221, 224, 236. 

Werburg, St., 101. 

Westminster, 102, 206 ; council at, 
215. 

Wibert, antipope, 168, 170. 

William, monk, 57. 

William of Malmesbury, 86, 189. 

William of St. Carileph, b. of 
Durham, 113, 126, 132, 135. 

William i., the Conqueror, 43, 56, 
78 ff., 92. 

William 11., Rufus, accession, 94; 
character, 95 ; church policy, 
97 f. ; illness, 104 ; and Nor- 
mandy, 155 ; death, 196 ; and 
Edith, 204. 

Winchester, 114, 158, 197, 206,218. 

Windsor, 146, 158. 

Worms, council at, 57. 



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Clark, LL.D., D.C.L., Trinity College, Toronto. 

XIX. DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 
By Rev. Professor J. Iverach, D.D., U.F.C. College, Aberdeen. 

XX. WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. By James Sime, 
M. A. , F. R. S. E. [Now ready. 

XXI. WESLEY AND METHODISM. By F. J. Snell, M.A.(Oxon.). 

[Now ready. 

XXII. LESSING AND THE NEW HUMANISM. Including Banmgarten 
and the Science of Esthetics. By Rev. A. P. DA"saDSON, M.A. 

XXIII. HUME AND HIS INFLUENCE ON PHILOSOPHY AND 

THEOLOGY. By Professor J. Orr, D.D., Glasgow. 

XXIV. ROUSSEAU AND NATURALISM IN LIFE AND THOUGHT. 

By Professor W. H. Hudson, M.A., Leland Stanford Junior 
University, California. 

XXV. KANT AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL REVOLUTION. By Pro- 
fessor R. M. Wenley, D.Sc, Ph.D., University of Michigan. 

XXVI. SCHLEIERMACHER AND THE REJITVTINESCENCE OF 
THEOLOGY. By Professor A. Martin, D.D., New College, 
Edinburgh. [Slwrtly. 

XXVII. HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM. By Professor R. Mackintosh, 
D.D,, Lancashire Independent College, Manchester. 

XXVIII. NEWMAN AND HIS INFLUENCE. By C. Sarolea, Ph.D., 
Litt. Doc, University of Edinburgh. 



T. and T. Clark's Publications. 



WORKS BY PROFESSOR A. B. BRUCE, P.P. 

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS: 

The First Apology for Christianity. Au Exegetical Study. By 
A. B. Bruce, D.D., Professor of Apologetics and New Testament 
Exegesis, Free Church College, Glasgow. Just published, Second 
Edition, in post 8vo, price 7s. 6d. 
This book, the fruit of thirty years' study, is a companion volume to 

Professor Bruce's 'The Kingdom of God,' and 'St. Paul's Conception of 

Christianity.' 

ST. PAUUS CONCEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Post 8vo, price 7s. 6d. 

• There need be no hesitation in pronouncing it the best treatment of 
Paulinism we have. ... A book of first-rate importance.' — Expositor. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD; 

.^. Or, Christ's Teaching according to the Synoptical Gospels. In post 
8vo, Sixth Edition, price 7s. 6d. 

' To Dr. Bruce belongs the honour of giving to English-speaking Christians 
the first really scientific treatment of this transcendent theme . . . his book 
is the best monograph on the subject in existence.' — Eev. James Stalker, 
D.D., in the British Weekly. 

' The astonishing vigour and the tmfailing insight which characterise the 
book mark a new era in biblical theology.' — Professor Makcus Dods, D.D. 

APOLOGETICS; 

Or, Christianity Defensively Stated. In post Svo, Third Edition, 
price 10s. 6d. In 'The International Theological Library.' 

• Dr. Bruce has won for himself the foremost place among apologists. . . . 
There does not exist in our language so satisfactory or original a treatment of 
the historicity of the Gospels, the claims of Jesus, and the significance of His 
appearance; nor have we so just and informing a criticism of the theories of 
primitive Christianity. . . . The Church at large will inevitably recognise Dr. 
Bruce's "Apologetics" as a volume of great and permanent value.' — Expositor. 

THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE: 

Or, Exposition of Passages in the Gospels exhibiting the Twelve 
Disciples of Jesus under Discipline for the Apostleship. In demy 
Svo, Fifth Edition, price 10s. 6d. 
' That minister who has not read "The Training of the Twelve" betrays 

an indifference to modorn thought which is unpardonable." — President 

Harper in the Biblical World. 

THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST, 

In its Physical, Ethical, and Official Aspects. In demy Svo, Fourth 

Edition, price 10s. 6d. 

' These lectures are able and deep-reaching to a degree not often found in the 

religious literatui-e of the day; withal they are fresh and suggestive. . . . The 

learning and the deep and sweet spirituality of this discussion will commend 

it to manv faithful students of the truth as it is in Jesus.' — Congregationalist, 



A GREAT BIBLICAL ENCYCLOPyEDIA. 



•If the other volumes come up to the standard of the first, this Dictionary seems 
likely to take its place as the standard authority for biblical students of the present 

generation. '—Times. 

To be Completed in Four Volumes, imperial 8vo (of nearly 900 pages each). 
Price per Volume, in cloth, $6.00; in half morocco, $8.00, 

A DIGTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, 

Dealing with its Language, Literature, and Contents, 
inciuding tlie Biblical Theology. 

Edited by JAMES HASTINGS, M.A., D.D,, with the Assistance of J. A. 
Selbie, M.A., and, chiefly in the Kevision of the Proofs, of A. B. 
Davidson, D.D., LL.D., Edinburgh; S. E. Driver, D.D., Litt.D., 
Oxford; and H. B. Swete, D.D., Litt.D., Cambridge. 

Full Prospectus, with Specimen Pages, from all Booksellers, or 
from the Publishers. 

' We offer Dr. Hastings our sincere congratulations on the publication of the first 
instalment of this great enterprise. ... A work was urgently needed which should 
present the student with the approved results of modern inquiry, and which should 
also acquaint him with the methods by which theological problems are now approached 
by the most learned and devout of our theologians.' — Guardian. 

' We welcome with the utmost cordiality the first volume of Messrs. Clark's great 
enterprise, " A Dictionary of the Bible." That there was room and need for such a 
book is unquestionable. . . . We have here all that the student can desire, a work of 
remarkable fulness, well up to date, and yet at the same time conservative in its 
general tendency, almost faultlessly accurate, and produced by the publishers in a most 
excellent and convenient style. We can thoroughly recommend it to our readers as a 
book which should fully satisfy their anticipations. . . . This new Dictionary is one of 
the most important aids that have recently been furnished to a true understanding of 
Scripture, and, properly used, will brighten and enrich the pulpit work of every 
minister who possesses it. . . . We are greatly struck by the excellence of the short 
articles. They are better done than in any other work of the kind. We have compared 
several of them with their sovirces, and this shows at once the unpretentious labour 
that is behind them. . . . Dr. A. B. Davidson is a tower of strength, and he shows at his 
best in the articles on Angels, on Covenant (a masterpiece, full of illumination), and on 
Eschatology of the Old Testament. His contributions are the chief ornaments and 
treasure-stores of the Dictionary. . . . We are very conscious of having done most 
inadequate justice to this very valuable book. Perhaps, however, enough has been said 
to show our great sense of its worth. It is a book that one is sure to be turning to again 
and again with increased confidence and gratitude. It will be an evil omen for the 
Church if ministers do not come forward to make the best of the opportunity now 
presented them. '—Editor, British Weekly. 

' Will give widespread satisfaction. Every person consulting it may rely upon its 
trustworthiness. . . . Far away in advance of any other Bible Dictionary that has ever 
been pubhshed in real usefulness for preachers, Bible students, and teachers.'— 
Methodist Recorder. 

' This monumental work. It has made a great beginning, and promises to take 
rank as one of the most important biblical enterprises of the centnrv.'— Christian 
World. 

Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street. 
ITew York : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



APR 21 1902 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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